Can Play Change the World? | Play@TED Full Event | TED, the LEGO Group and the LEGO Foundation

Hello. Hi everyone. Hello to everyone on the live stream. Hello to everyone here in the room. Welcome to Play a TED. We are going to have such an incredible time here together. Um, my name is Chris Duffy. I am the host of Ted's How to Be a Better Human podcast. I am a comedian and I wrote a book all about how to laugh more every day. But this is true. If you were to Google me, that is not necessarily what will come up. If you Google me, and what I'm about to show you is very it's important for me to let you know that this is not edited or doctorred in any way. If you Google me, this is the Google image result that comes up. Now, I love what I love most about that is that one of them is me. That's just my little punim in there going like, "Hey, I'm here, too. " And actually both of us, both that Chris Duffy and this Chris Duffy, we are both so glad to be here today hosting Play at Ted. And um this is an incredible, incredible event. I believe so deeply in the importance of play, goofing around. I'm a professional goofball. And at the heart of this event, play, it said is a simple belief that young people aren't just participants in this conversation. They are essential to it. And from the very beginning, we designed this experience with youth voice at the center. We began this initiative by bringing together more than 300 students from across the world, more than 27 countries. And they shared their stories and their insights about play, what it means to them, how it helps them to build real world skills, and why it should be an even bigger part of how they learn and grow. And beyond today, this work is going to continue through TEDex events around the world where even more voices are going to take the stage to share ideas sparked by this initiative. Our aim here is really clear. We want to spark a global movement demonstrating how creative play can lead to brighter minds, braver ideas, and a more imaginative future for everyone. Okay, so let's get started with our first session. Play is a language. Our first speaker is a human creativity expert who trained in clinical psychology at Columbia University's MindBody Institute. She's the co-founder of Daydreamers, a platform exploring how creativity supports human health and flourishing. And she's the person who coined the term creative health. We're going to hear a lot more about that idea right now. Please welcome Kina Bajage. When I was 8 years old, I had this ritual. After I finished my homework, I'd head upstairs to my room, turn on my favorite Christina Aguilera CD, and sit on the floor, surrounding myself with all this stuff that was supposed to make me playful. I'd take out my Barbies one by one, spread out my markers in every color, and then I'd wait. And I'd wait until something felt worthy enough, perfect enough to make. That moment barely ever came. Ever since I was a kid, play felt like something that I had to earn. And when I finally did do it, I took it seriously. My favorite game growing up was emergency room doctor. I'd forced my younger brother to scrub in, robes on, beanie babies fully prepped, and I was head surgeon, of course, so there was no room for mistakes in my O. Most people don't become play skeptics until they're adults. But for me, even at eight, I was questioning the point of it. So I ended up doing what any reasonable skeptic would do. And I became a scientist. I got my masters in clinical psychology and spent almost the last decade studying the science of creativity. And what I discovered surprised me because creativity isn't just a talent. It is a core part of all of our well-being. A pillar that I came to establish and become a fierce advocate for called creative health. And one of the best strategies that we have to strengthen our creative health is exactly what I dismissed as a kid. Play. That's because when we play, especially as adults, we unlock this unique type of flourishing. We have deeper fulfillment and stronger resilience and even more original ideas. But the type of play that I'm talking about is probably not what we're all imagining. It's not just being silly or childlike or even starting up a brand new hobby. We've reduced play to be this cherry on top of an already good life. But from a scientific perspective, it is much more fundamental than that. Play is what happens anytime we choose to do something without knowing exactly where it's going to end up. There are no instructions we need to follow or outcomes we need to achieve. Just two elements, intrinsic motivation and the freedom not to know the answer in advance. The problem is we've come to treat that type of play as worse than optional. It's something that we avoid and even punish. So much so that upwards of 70% of adults around the world today have stopped doing it. I first noticed this pattern as I was interviewing thousands of people about their current relationship with play. And I kept hearing the same thing over and over. They told me they didn't have the time or the talent or the right tools to do it anymore. And when they finally did, it wasn't play. It looked a lot like my emergency room. Something that was scheduled and optimized with nothing left to chance. I know this might not seem like a big deal, like we're just having less fun, but it's deeper than that. We are living through a play deprivation crisis. We've systematically removed everything that makes play what it is the spontaneity, the freedom, the wonder from all parts of adult life and replaced it with efficiency and achievement. And in doing so, we're losing the very survival skills that we need the most right now. things like our capacity to adapt and imagine and even feel alive. Play deprivation is tricky though because at first we barely notice it's happening. We just feel endlessly busy. But over time without play stress can compound and then burnout can become chronic. And then we walk around as playless adults which ultimately creates a playless society. One where our institutions can grow rigid and lonely and polarized. But we can change this though, not even just for ourselves, but for future generations, too. Because play isn't something we age out of. It is a lifelong trait. Which means no matter how invisible it might feel, we can always restore it. And how we go about doing that is much simpler and more expansive than you'd think. At my company, Daydreamers, one of the things we got extremely curious to figure out was finding the optimal way to play. Are you noticing a trend about me yet? We studied all kinds of people, executives, postal workers, stay-at-home parents from 18 to 85. And we looked at how they played, not in a lab, but in the texture of their daily lives. And as we analyzed the millions of minutes of creative behaviors that we collected through pictures and psychologically validated assessments, we found the opposite of my hypothesis. Play wasn't some list of actions we could add to our calendar. It was an approach. The people who became creatively healthy were doing something differently. They were playing all the time in all these parts of life, thinking playfully, expressing themselves playfully, even noticing when it happened around them. And as they began to embody it, their lives transformed. So while I wish I could stand here and give us one play prescription to follow, that would be the antithesis of what it is. What I can do though is paint a picture of what a playful life could look like because we don't need more stuff. We just need to start injecting it back into how we already live. And the three places to start are during work, before sleep, and in public. Let's start at work because most of us get stuck in this linear task oriented thinking, churning through to-dos, and in back-to-back meetings. But neuroscientists have found that the spontaneous imaginative thinking that's underneath creative play lives in a different part of our brain called the default mode network. And that gets activated when we do things we don't normally consider productive. Playful people mind wander. They daydream. We often call that laziness, but underneath the surface, our creative brain is actually hard at work connecting all these disperate ideas that don't make sense yet. Even Einstein swore by this. He credited his most innovative ideas not to doing math behind a desk, but to thought experiments. And right now, protecting our nonlinear thinking matters more than ever. And that doesn't happen through doing cringy ice breakers. So next time you see Mark staring off into the distance during a meeting or even you want to look away from your inbox, celebrate it because your thinking is starting to play. Okay, that sounds doable, right? But what happens when we get home from work? Well, most of us feel exhausted. So, we reach for ease. We scroll, order food at the click of a button. We want our lives to be frictionless. But our play and our lives need friction. There's actually a type of positive stress called ustress that comes about when we do things that require effort from us. That's why physically playing or making things with our bodies actually expands our energy and even our perception of time. But we've come to engineer the friction out of that too, though. We think playing at home is perfectly completing a page of that adult coloring book or following a YouTube tutorial to a tea. Real play, though, is freer than that, which can feel uncomfortable at first. It's experimenting with a bunch of different ingredients without a recipe or doodling in the margins of your notebook. It can be that simple. That's actually exactly what I was doing when I had my own creative breakthrough. Normally, I'd get home from work and try to relax. Or if I was feeling extra adventurous, I'd take out my notebook and try to write something profound. Neither of which are very playful. But one night while I was writing, my pen moved to the left and then it made a circle and then a bunch of random shapes and patterns started to flow. And while I did feel uncomfortable, I was also incredibly liberated. And when I came back to reality and tried to make sense of it, I thought of my 8-year-old self sitting on the floor of her room waiting for something worthy to make. And I realized in that moment that she, like so many of us, got it backwards because we don't need to wait for play to feel good to do it. Doing it in the face of resistance and discomfort is how we begin. But we can't just play alone at our desks or in our rooms. We need to play in public, too. The last and most insidious sign of play deprivation is cultural. It's when we don't just dep prioritize it ourselves, but we actively punish it in the world. Silencing music in our parks or calling leisure time lazy. Almost a hundred years ago, philosopher Johan Heisinga warned us about this, suggesting that when a culture loses play, it can become brittle and polarized, unable to cope with change. I know that might seem familiar and maybe even scary, but know that play is inherently contagious. Research actually shows that just being in proximity to people doing it can motivate us to do it, too. So, we don't always need to be the main character. We can just amplify it when we see it. I'm sure you've noticed this happen before when a crowd begins to form around a musician. But most of us end up racing past. So, next time, I want you to take out your headphones and listen for a moment. Maybe be the first to laugh or clap or join in. Because when we make play visible, it allows our communities to come alive, too. I know that even these small moments of play can feel like an act of rebellion in a world that's convinced us doing it as adults is unnecessary. And often times, they are. But it wasn't always this way. Since the beginning of our species, we have been making these beautiful, weird, funny, interesting things for no bigger purpose at all. Anthropologist Ellen Desayak actually has a name for this capacity. She calls it making special in her work studying early human societies. She also kept noticing an interesting pattern. Every culture, without having spoken to one another first, kept adding these playful touches to the most ordinary aspects of their lives. They decorated their tools with intricacy. They made clothes and filled them with beads and shells. They danced and told stories and appreciated beauty for no functional or productive reason, just because. So this exact capacity to play, to make special isn't just inside of you. It's wired into our entire species. It's always how we've stayed human. How we've bonded and adapted and even made meaning in life's most difficult moments. And I see that as our responsibility to keep that part of ourselves alive. So we need to play again in any form in every part of life. Not necessarily because it will lead us somewhere better, but because we are human and humans play. Thank you. — Thank you so much, Kina. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. We are Today is all about making special. And speaking of which, um, how incredible is this stage? These are made out of actual Lego bricks. That's so cool. Um, okay, our next speaker is not just famous online for his art. He has had gallery exhibitions. He has collaborated with major brands. And he's had his works shared with the Prince and Princess of Wales. And before you start thinking, okay, surely this is someone who's already due to retire and probably have a major career retrospective at the end of his life. Nope. He is only 16 years old, known online as Doodle Boy. He is an incredible artist. We are so lucky to have him here with us right now. and I will introduce him in one moment. Okay. Um, we are he's going to be doing a live drawing. So, we're you have a real treat here. Um, please welcome straight from Australia, Joe Whale. When I was younger, I used to get told off in class for doodling. I couldn't stop. My teacher would always stop me from doing this. And it was really worrying because as a creative person, it's something that I do naturally. After a few weeks at my art class, I was booked in because I was having this trouble at school. My teacher suggested something unusual. There was a big empty wall in a local restaurant. She asked them if I could draw on it. They said yes. So, I started filling the restaurant wall with my artwork. People would come in and watch me while they were eating. Photos started appearing online. Then the local newspaper wrote about it. And suddenly, people all around the world were talking about this kid who couldn't stop doodling. That moment changed my life. I wasn't even trying to be an artist. But the important thing is how it started. It started with my imagination and parents who didn't disregard but embraced my passion. It started with the freedom to just draw. And that's what I want to talk about today. Because the world is very different than when it was when I was first doodling 10 years ago. Today, it's possible to type prompts into AI, make anything, and feel creative. But I believe there will always be value in letting our imaginations be the true driver of our creations. Because imagination is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. But if you don't use it, it gets weaker and your body will rely on something else to do it for you. Creativity is not encouraged today. It's not given value. So it's easy to turn to the tools right in front of us and get an instant result. But you don't learn by going straight to the end. You learn from the journey. Everything begins with a thought, an idea, a meaning or a vision. That's your imagination, the beginning. And that beginning influences what you do from that point. It's freedom. Imagination is the first step. Then direction flows through the creation. You're letting yourself literally wander wherever you wish the freedom to go anywhere because that first step is coming from you and not something else. What I can see is we'll be reliant to replace something we all need and all have. We'll be handing it off just because it's easier. And that worries me because for everyone growing up around AI, they'll see it as normal to sacrifice their unique perspective, becoming more and more shaped, even defined by what they can't control. I'm just going to show you something visually now. I often start my artworks with a simple shape. Thinking something spiky here. and then big eye like this. Then I'll add some other detail. Often when I'm creating in the moment, it helps me feel very free so I can just flow with each character and each line. In New York, as I've traveled, I've seen lots of people on skateboards. So, I'm going to draw one of them. And I'll add the wheels in there. And then I often like to add icons like a heart. Feel like it's very simple but very effective. And then I love these kind of eyes like an alien like that. Then I'll keep this going. The arms and then the legs as well. And with this character, I'll just start with another simple shape like so. Fill in this. This guy's not very happy. And then what I like to do to balance an artwork is just add lines and shapes to just fill out the space and movement lines which give life to a piece. something I always use. I hope we can all take a step back from AI and embrace what makes us truly unique. our ability to convert figments of our imaginations and turn them into impactful realities. We face this choice every day. So, let's embrace this uniqueness, this imagination, and the creativity that brings us all together. Thank you. Heat. Hallelujah. Nice work to all those kids. Great work kids. And thank you so much to designer G. Lee who created this project inspired by his child's creativity. Um, also a really cool opportunity is um during the breaks if you felt inspired by Joe's talk and you want to do some doodling of your own, we are going to have the ability for you all to be doodling yourself. So, look forward to that. Um, okay. For our next talk, we are going to shift gears a little bit. Um, you're going to hear all about the importance of children's play, but these are children who are living under some very difficult circumstances. Our next speaker, Iram Mariam, is the executive director of the Brack Institute of Educational Development, where she champions a simple but powerful idea. Every child deserves the right to play. She has worked with children in Bangladesh, Tanzania, Uganda, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, and beyond. Um, Iram's work and responsibilities meant that she was unfortunately not able to travel here. So, we filmed her talk in advance while she was still in Dhaka. um as I know that you are about to see the work that she is doing is so powerful and so important. So please join me in welcoming Iram Miam. In August 2017 the genocide in Myanmar had exploded overnight. The military were killing Rohingya people setting their villages on fire. This was part of the ethnic cleansing of the Rohhinga people. The women and men who had escaped were now flooding across the border carrying infants and young children on their back. Within four months, over 850,000 people crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh in a town called Cox's Bazar. I am Bangladeshi and I live in Dhaka. I have spent my career working to make sure children have access to play when everything else in their lives has been in chaos. I have worked with children for over three decades now through BA, the world's largest NGO. While the Rohingya refugees were arriving by the thousand in Bangladesh, I got an urgent call from my BA colleague. He told me I had to go visit the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar and see how the children were doing. I thought about how much those kids had been through. They saw things that no child should ever see. I wondered how would they ever recover. I believed play might help them reconnect with what they lost, their culture and their sense of home. I believed play might heal them. And what we discovered over time was that it was not just any kind of play that would help them heal. It was specifically play from their own Rohhinga culture that helped them feel pride, gain confidence, and experience joy after being violently forced to leave behind their home. So, I'll go back to the beginning. After that phone call in 2017, I traveled to the camps in Cox's Bazar. Aid workers had set up safe spaces for the children. I found children drawing guns in their art. That was not unusual. But I saw something that surprised me. Someone had donated Scrabble sets and Uno cards for the children. It was a generous gesture, but the children had never seen these games before. They didn't know the rules. They didn't speak the language. Even the adult facilitators didn't know how to play. They were arranging the scrabble tiles into patterns because that's what made sense to them. Standing there, I thought, there's got to be a better way. These kids were used to wide open spaces with trees and flowers. And now they were crammed into a refugee camp with a million other people. Every shelter was a copype of the next. Bamboo frames, tin roof, blue and black plastic tarp held back the monsoon rain. The air smelled like still water and human waste. But none of the kids ever complained and there were no signs of frustration. Instead, some kids were just withdrawn, others were restless. Some wouldn't engage with kids or with adults. This was painful to watch, but typical of kids who have gone through such extreme conditions. But even the kids who were withdrawn would come alive and express more joy when they were playing in a certain way, the Rohhinga way. So for the next few months, we watched them and we asked lots of questions. What did you play in Myanmar? How did you play it? How did you decorate your home? Why? What does it mean? Children, parents, grandparents, and siblings would show and tell us from the kids. We heard the stories their grandparents told. We heard rhymes that their siblings knew by heart. We watched physical games that their parents did when they were little. And we watched them make traditional Rohhinga art, the kind of art that would be hanging in every household back home. And from that we built what we now call the humanitarian play lab. Small welcoming spaces for kids three to five decorated by the Rohhinga community itself with hand embroidered cloth hanging from the ceiling and artwork of flowers and homes and animals. images that the children recognized from a life they were forced to leave behind. Each play lab is facilitated by young Rohingya women who spend up to 5 hours simply playing with the kids. Each play lab is also supported by other women trained in psychosocial support to help kids manage their emotion. At 9:00 a. m. those kids leave their home to walk to the play lab through narrow passageways. It takes them only three minutes to step into a different world. While still in the camp, a Rohingya woman, their play facilitator, greets 30 young children. She asks, "How are we today? Are we all okay? " Here we are like friends and siblings at home. Respect those who are older and love those younger. Then she asks, "Who wants to lead the rhyme? " One child steps forward to lead. Hands are up, bodies move, they chant, they play, they jump, they giggle, they listen to stories, they draw. One of the girls is N. N is just 8 years old. 5 years ago, Nur was undernourished, withdrawn and shy. She was physically weak with continuous diarrhea. When N started coming to the play lab at the age of three, she sat quietly. She watched. Then she learned the rope game from the facilitator. The game she plays is a traditional Rohingya one. Two kids hold a long rope, flipping it back and forth while N leaps over it without touching it, reciting a rhyme while she's jumping. She's tracking the rope. She's controlling her feet and she keeps the words coming all at once. N kept playing. As she played, she became stronger. Her mother noticed that N became less shy and confident. And once Noo learned it, her mother encouraged her, telling her to jump higher, go further, be bolder. When you watch her jump rope, you forget for a moment where you are. She doesn't just jump, she flies. Now N walks around the camp with a rope in her hand. Just in case she finds a space to jump. She may still be shy to speak to strangers, but she will jump in front of any audience. That's not a small thing for a kid who used to fade into the background. Nurse's mother played this game as a girl. This is not a Bangladeshi game. She says we Rohinga call this Roshi Fal Dani. This has made my daughter stronger. She's not scared anymore. She has courage. Then there is Muhammad. Muhammad is about 7 years old. He lives with his parents and four siblings. and he is known as the seesaw boy in his neighborhood. This game is not the seesaw that we imagine. The Rohhinga seesaw is where two kids wrap their legs around each other like acrobats and swing together going up and down. At the play lab, he learned something that was even more important than the skill to balance. During the game, Muhammad learned that he needs to be careful while playing the seessaw game. one wrong move and the other kid will get hurt. Children learn to pay attention to someone else's body before their own. So, he prefers not to play with the younger kids, not because he doesn't want to, but because he's concerned that he might hurt them because of his strength. Playing taught him to pay attention to how others might feel. He became more thoughtful of his mother and his younger siblings. When he gets biscuits in school, he chooses to bring it for his younger siblings instead. And he cleans the house and washes the pots so that his mother can get some rest. He hopes to be a teacher someday. Now, let's talk about Tuhinur. Tuhinor is four years old. As a 2-year-old, she was shy and quiet. Other children teased her and called her fooly, meaning fat. She never responded. She cried silently to her mother. Her mother Yasmine worried how she would raise her daughter to be more assertive. When Yasmine became a facilitator at the play lab, she brought Tuhinor with her. Soon Yasmine noticed that Tuhinor would be the first to raise her hand to lead the Kabia, a traditional Rohinga rhyme with hand movements and body gestures. Tuhinur learned the entire rhyme and when and how to move her body add hand movements. She now leads the cup beer. She stands at the front reciting the words in a clear loud voice and moves her hand and body in a way that the other kids follow. Some of those following her are older. She doesn't seem to notice. Leading the kabia meant doing this perfectly so that others could learn and follow. She became the lead at age three. Tuhino loves leading the rhyme so much that she will practice at night with her shadow on the bamboo wall and dance with it. Yasmin says Tuhin is bold and no one can tease her anymore. These are just a few examples and we've been running the play lab since 2017 reaching 50,000 children across 350 humanitarian plays in Cox's bazar. We've also used this approach in the Rhino refugee camp in Uganda. We've been working on it for the last 5 years and we'll be scaling and setting up 150 playab reaching 63,000 children in Uganda. I believe this work really matters. The play lab helps children to get ready to enter school feeling confident and proud. When I visit the camp now, parents say shukria or thank you for recognizing Rohingya play. The children here didn't choose to be refugees. They didn't choose to leave behind their home and where they belonged. But through play, we've helped them rediscover their own culture, the Rohhinga culture. And in doing so they showed us something extraordinary. Their ability to find confidence, joy and pride even when a place is so unfamiliar. And that is something that every child deserves. Not just the children in Cox's Bazar. Every child everywhere deserves the right to play their own play. Thank you. We actually have uh Iram live on video stream with us right now from Bangladesh. Thank you so much for that uh beautiful talk and being here with us too. Um, I'd love to know what's your own personal relationship with play. — Well, I was raised by a mother who was so playful and she really believed in play. And so, she would tell me stories of the largest fruits and the brightest flowers. And she showed me how to climb trees. And on a rain day which would be rainy when it was raining she would say let's go and play outside and she would take me to the gardens and say let's roam around with the butterflies and so you know in my childhood you know she never stopped me from playing I could play non-stop. So when I grew up and I became an adult and then I joined Bragg the NGO the founder was Sir Fuzley Abed and Sir Fuzley Abid did groundbreaking work for children who were vulnerable in health and education and so one day sir Fuzle Abed asked me so I am what do you think of play for younger kids and I absolutely jumped at the idea and so with that vision then I started Ed working on play in Bangladesh and lot of my colleagues started working on play in East Africa and I play worked on play in Bangladesh with my some of my colleagues. So we were working in Bangladesh and a lot of my colleagues were also working on play in East Africa and all of us while we worked we really recognized that play was absolutely lifechanging for all children but particularly for children who were vulnerable and so I'm very grateful to my mother for having a childhood where I played so much and I'm very grateful to Sir Abid for letting us work on play. So, my own relationship with play is that I'm very grateful. — Well, we're very grateful for you and for the work you do. And I hope you can hear the applause that you've gotten here in this room. Thank you. Thank you so much, Aram. And thank you again for being here with us. Um, all right. Our next speaker, our next speaker is the only award-winning artist that I've ever met who can also absolutely dominate in a slam dunk competition. He is a Harlem Globe Troder and a beautifully nuanced, talented mixed media artist whose work has been shown at Art Basil Miami. There is really no one else like him. Please give a huge welcome to Maxwell Pierce. GUYS, HERE it goes from level seven. Can I see that Zeus? — Thank you, man. Yeah, ONE. That was me shooting a basketball off of a 230 ft New York City building. It's certainly not your typical basketball court. I am a member of the Harlem Globe Trotters, a legendary exhibition basketball team that is credited for integrating the NBA, popularizing new moves like the alleyoop, and creating so many others. These are the new moves that have advanced the game, but they've also given joy to the people that come and watch us perform. And that right there is precisely how we have lasted for a hundred years while also earning a spot in the Hall of Fame. Getting to this point in my career certainly was not a straight line. I've always struggled with highlevel sports coaching. There's a certain culture that has excessive cursing, yelling, and also a hyper seriousness that can really stunt your growth. Although we were playing sports, ironically, we weren't coached not to be very playful. I was a creative kid who loved art, but I was really, really shy. So, the constant confrontation with my coaches was always robbing me of my creativity. I learned that there was a seriousness in respecting the quality of the game. Whether it was basketball, football, baseball, or cross country, all of my coaches emphasized honoring and respecting the essence of their sport. And that meant taking every drill and every exercise seriously and not doing anything that will challenge the traditional way of doing things. This is exactly what led my high school coach to telling me to stop trying to dunk the basketball. But ironically, it was my playfulness that got me to this point in my career. So, here's where I've landed today. And this is what I'm so excited to share with you all. Play is the most important ingredient in every person and every industry's evolution. I am an athlete and an artist and I have witnessed how play can break rules to improve both of these worlds that I live in. So just imagine if play, creativity, and a little bit of rulebreaking was in every industry. There once was a time in basketball where dunking was frowned upon so much that the NCAA banded for 9 years. Once that ban was lifted, the popularity of the game skyrocketed. This context reminds me of my coaches yelling at me to stick to the fundamentals all because I decided or had the audacity to try and dunk the ball one time. Thankfully, I didn't listen to them and I got more and more comfortable with it. And over time, I was able to land my first dunk contest. With a lot of work, I was able to build a global reputation for dunking the basketball. I began to experiment with the boundaries of this. I would incorporate things that we didn't normally associate with dunking, like with a dog — or catching a baseball. or catching the ball without looking from someone else who's not looking. — Oh my god. Every time I approached this with a playful mindset, I was rewarded not only with advancing the game, but also with the opportunities that I dreamed of as a kid. There were several video games that I used to love to play like NBA Live and NBA 2K, and I had the opportunity to feature my dunks in both of them. I've also GQ magazine as well as Sports Center top 10 and eventually received an honorable mention for an SP award. Unlike what my coaches constantly bickered about, being a glow troder requires much of the opposite. So much of what we love about the game today, a lot of that was at one point deemed as not fundamental or non-traditional. There's a beauty in balancing seriousness with play. For example, if I decided that I wanted to do something and I actually accidentally made a mistake, there is a way that I could brush that off. When a globe charter makes a mistake, they can have it be overlooked because of how they playfully embrace its direction. They recognize that something went wrong, but they actually welcome the unfamiliarity that comes with that new position. So, for instance, if I try this trick right here and I accidentally drop the ball, I can use the momentum from that mistake to grow it into something new. what I've learned is that in order to get to that point, you have to be able to roll with it because otherwise you'll stop before you you're ever able to discover something new. And that is actually how we are able to stumble upon a new concept. As I mentioned before, I am also an artist. In fact, the artist side of me came before I was ever a basketball player. Basketball amongst other sports has allowed me to have an ongoing relationship as it impacts my practice as an artist. Sports have given me the tools to identify voids in and around my life while also giving me a platform to fill them. Again, I was a really shy kid, so art was my way of expressing myself when sports didn't give me the opportunity to. I used to create drawings of my favorite anime characters. I would paint pictures of animals. And over time, I started to focus on people with real stories. Some of these experiences that I've had with basketball have allowed me to gain a new perspective. One day, I decided to cut up some shoelaces and put them on a canvas. I wasn't totally satisfied with it just yet, but I knew that I had something significant there. Using this as my medium has allowed me to communicate my identity through my pieces. This is what it looks like up close. One of these signatures that's constantly through my work is using pieces of equipment that are a part of my personal journey as an athlete. For example, sometimes that's cut up basketballs from a past Globe Troder game. Other times that's tennis rackets from my childhood. — And sometimes it's just shoelaces that I wore when I was doing something important. play has given me the flexibility but also the vision to see these materials as something more than just what we use on the court or on the field. All of these items, they have stories behind them. They have connections to the people that use them. Whether it's the tennis ball that bounced several thousand times to bring people together, or it's the spinning basketball that brought smiles to so many people's faces around the world, or if it's shoelaces that I wore on a bad day, but I knew that I needed to keep moving. Play is what brings all of these things together, figuratively and physically. The world's brightest thinkers, engineers of evolution, they all play too much. Seriously, thank you. Thanks. Give Maxwell another huge round of applause. Wow. Um, in all seriousness, I just want to say it is such an incredible honor to be in the same space as such talented and uh, beautiful people. And um, one of the real cool things that we have going on in the break is one of Maxwell's newest art pieces will be on display so you can see it up close and personal. Um, this is the conclusion of session one. And one of the things that makes played incredible, it's incredible for so many reasons, but one reason is because it is not just happening in this room. It is also happening online where they have their own amazing hosts that are going to be conducting exclusive interviews, playing games, showing TED animations, and revealing behindthe-scenes moments. So, if you're watching the live stream, you will get to see interviews from guests like incredible people like Simone Girtz, uh, Andrew Yaffy, and others. And we will see you, if you're on the live stream, we'll see you back here for session two. So, live stream, I'm gonna hand you off to my colleagues in the studio.

— Thanks, Chris. And hi, live stream audience. I'm Alexandra Panzer and I just caught a basketball. — And I'm Alex Rosenthal and I didn't, but I would like to try someday. — I believe in you. — Now that we're off the stage, things are going to get a little weird and wonderful. — Yep. We're going to Well, the main stage is going to keep the big ideas flowing. We're going to be hanging out behind the scenes with some of our favorite creative minds. We're going to have conversations, games, experiments, a live performance, and probably a little chaos. I'm going to be playing games with some creators and luminaries and seeing where curiosity takes us. — And I'm going to be sitting down and chatting with some of your favorite creators, people who are celebrating play in their work online and off. — So stick around because we're just getting started. I'm so excited to introduce our first guest. Simone Yet is a Swedish inventor and YouTuber and the founder of Yet Studios. Simone, — thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Also, what a buffet. — Oh, yes. Please don't eat them. — No. — Uh there is one edible one in there, but you we'll see if we can find it. Um, we're going to play a game and I'm also while we just chat. Um, so the so we're calling this game Brictionary. It's basically Pictionary with Lego bricks. So we're each going to draw something out of this hat and we're going to create it for each other. — Okay. — And um, how do you feel about multitasking? — Good. Good. Good. I mean, if there's anything constantly being on our phones have taught us multitasking. Okay. So, we're drawing — a note and then drawing in Lego bricks. — Okay. Yes, exactly. — How did you come up with this idea? — Um, I don't know. It came to me in a dream. Okay, this can be a — Because it's funny because I before I started my YouTube channel, I actually gave um or did a project with Lego when I was in advertising school and one of the warm-ups that we thought of was doing Pictionary with Lego bricks. Yeah. — Was it just like this? — Yeah. — Did it work? — It was just like this, but a lot more screaming. — Should we scream? — Yeah. It was just because it was like a team thing and everybody had to guess. Um — uh so yeah, — I um I don't have the most skills at building out of Lego bricks. So, uh — you're in luck because I do. — I just found a really good piece. Okay. — Um I'd love to also just chat while we do this. Um so, — and in that the theme of the event is play, — um I just want to talk about games and play and everything. And I feel like you have one of the most playful design processes — that I've ever seen. And I'm just really curious about the role of play in how you create. — Oh, dude. It is really like I was not I played a lot as a kid and then I was an incredibly ambitious teenager and really lost my touch with the play in a lot of ways. Like I was so duty driven and then I realized that like enthusiasm is a way better fuel than duty. I think I'm kind of ready for you to guess. Okay, put it up here so that the audience at home can guess. — I'm going windmill. — Yay. — Yeah. Okay, — we did it. — That's very good. — Yeah, but I realiz — try another word. — Enthusiasm is a way better fuel than duty, but to keep your enthusiasm, it's like it's not a skill that we really learn. And I think play is one of the things of just like being free form and setting the bar really low. I think for me the problem was often like setting the bar really high and letting my perfectionism get in the way. So now I'm just like, you know what, just do something. It doesn't have to be great. Oh, this one's a hard one. — Yeah. I'm also I don't think this is going to work. Um interesting. So what did you play as a kid? — Uh I mean I feel like there's a way that adults imagine that kids play and it's like mom and dad. Mine was like, "We are orphans. We need to harvest the organs of the other orphans to survive. " Like, it's a lot of just playing despair. I don't know. — Oh, I have a 5-year-old and we're just always orphans. — I don't Yeah. And I feel like it's like the Disney complex as well, cuz I think it's the thing of like you're a kid and you have to figure it out on your own, where it's if you have parents, you're like, why wouldn't I just go to my dad? — Yeah, exactly. It's immediate conflict and it sets up stakes. — Um I'm looking for a torso or a head. — So, okay. So, when you start — Where's a head? — So, like where when you're starting to create something new, — are like it seems like you play with material a lot. design. Is that fair to say? — Yeah. — I think it's okay. Wait. Sorry. I'm ready for you to guess another one. — Um Okay. Put it here just so — Yeah. This is teenytiny for all of this. It doesn't stand up on its own, so I have to hold it. — Okay. Wait. And then I need to Okay. Interesting. Um, body horror. — Worm. — Um, snake. — No. — Uh, esophagus. — It has a head. — Well, yeah. That's why I thought the pink thing was the esophagus. Uh, wave. Um, dolphin. I think I need more. — Ah, damn it. — Okay. Sorry. — I'm disappointed in you. — I deserve that. — I probably did a bad job. — Okay. Well, here I'm going to try mine. Uh, color is meaningful, I will say. And I'm also Okay, I'm gonna put it here for a second so we can see it up close. Um, it should have a head. — Well, I think this thing is a head. — It is. — Okay. And then I'm gonna play with it. — A bush plane. — No. I mean, it is you're right that it's flying. — Yeah. — Um, and color is meaningful. — Color important. — Oh. Oh, okay. — Here. Wait. I mean, not really throwing up, but — Oh, dragon. — Yeah, there you go. — Yay. Okay. — Okay. I need a new word. — Sorry, you were asking me a question, and I'm not good at multitasking, apparently. Okay. Right. Design and material. And I mean, for now, a lot of my projects start with a problem. So, it'll be like — glasses are annoying and they fog up. And then I start thinking of, okay, is there another way you could do it? I think for me I Oh, I wonder if this actually will help you. Uh novelty and uniqueness uh really matters. So I want it to be a take like my ideal project is a take on an everyday object that you haven't seen before. So like rethinking these objects uh and how to do them better or get them to do a different job. Okay. What about this now? I wonder if the hair helped. Um, oh man. Please, if you are in the comments, please uh help me out here. — And there's so much blue around. — I mean, is this a humanoid thing? — Yeah, it's one that you're very familiar with. — Is it a character? I'm very familiar with it. Is it a specific person? — No, but it's living in the water. — A mermaid. — Yeah. Okay. Um, great. — That's perfect. Okay. You're talking about um design and everyday objects and I want to talk about jigsaws a little bit because we've both done wacky jigsaw projects recently — and do you want to describe some of the interesting things you've done with jigsaws? — Yeah. So, uh, this is once again comes to like the uniqueness that I seek for the things I do. And I think that is honestly part of my perfectionism coming in because I'm like, I won't allow myself to do what just other people are doing because I'm like, yeah, but then how can I justify taking up space in the world? So, in some ways, it's like me setting the bar really high for myself. But, I love jigsaw puzzles. I think they're so fun. And I thought, what if you had a puzzle where almost every piece was an edge piece? because usually you start with the rectangular outline of your puzzle, but if every piece is an edge piece, you would need to have a different technique. So, we have developed this um set of edge piece puzzles, which basically is like an outline that snakes around and that's mostly two piece pieces wide. So, it pushes you to do something differently. And I think that is really fun of just like, okay, what if everything that you know about jigsaw puzzles doesn't really apply here? So, I I've done one of them. I did the Ant Hill one, and I loved it. Um, and my 5-year-old also really enjoyed doing it, and like I love that it tells a story. — Um, — so with the my Jigsaw Game, Pandora's Legacy, um, the ED, you can't really start with the edges. Like, it's a similar situation where it's sort of breaking the like, okay, do the frame first. — Um, and one of my colleagues that made him very mad because he was like, that's where I start. Like, just give me the edges. Um, what kind of responses have you got from people? — Oh, I get the juiciest, angry, happy reviews. — Yeah, — I realize that it's like, yeah, it's people who are just like, "This was so hard. I yelled through all of it. " Uh, five out of five stars. — Amazing. — So, uh, yeah, it's a lot of people who are upset and thrilled that it's difficult in a different way. I mean, your puzzle was incredibly difficult, but for all the — the clues and stuff, I got about halfway through. — Okay. There's some cool stuff at the end, too. — Oh, damn it. — Actually, yeah, I there's some like mechanical things that I want to tell you about at some point because um just I think your brain would enjoy those. — Um Okay. And so, you also have a all-white puzzle with one missing piece. — Yeah, we actually took that out of our catalog. — Um gift to humanity. pieces. Yeah. My one of my first products that I did was an all-white puzzle with one piece missing. So, you got 499 out of 500 puzzles. And I think that was also like it was kind of commentary on perfectionism. And that I thought it was really funny that like if a puzzle misses a piece or is missing a piece, it loses a lot of its value. But what if it was sold — intentionally incomplete? And also, I have a jar, a big jar in my workshop that has everybody's missing pieces. — Oh. — So, it's like kind of just the most benign super villain. — Yeah. It's like has their souls. — Yeah. I have all their missing pieces. — So, it's sort of like exquisite torture in two ways. One, you have no image. What do you think about constructing with the puzzle box? Like, do you — I don't look at the box. Yeah. I'm hardcore. — Yeah. And was that part of the intention there that you can't like it's all white. There's no box to look at. — It's just all and it's random cut as well which makes it — I guess um — it's kind of it's a little bit of a minimal take on this. — Yeah. — I'll face it toward the camera — scale. — Uh this is um one to 100 maybe. — I don't know. Actually I'm not very good at estimating. Um, — maybe this should let me switch the order of these on it. — It's like, what is it? — Okay. I'm also just going to um act it a little bit. — Lighthouse. — Yeah. — Oh, yay. Spot on. — The acting. — Are you eager to finish what you're building now? — Oh, I don't have one. I'm just rebuilding. — Oh, you're Oh, I'm so sorry. I should have given you something. Okay. No, it's all good. — You want to play another game? — Yeah. Okay, we're gonna play some So, Ted, we we make games. — Um, and do you want to play a logic game or a word game? — Word game. — Let's do it. — But also, English is my second language, so — that's okay because we're going to play together. It's not going to be too hard. It's going to be fun. Um, so this is a game called Letter Brew. — Okay. — And the first part of Letter Brew is Are you familiar with word letters? — Uhhuh. — Where you change one letter at a time in a word. So, so we have the word melt and then we um the clue is asteroid blank. So, — asteroid belt. — Yeah, exactly. So, we change one letter in that. And then, um, here, let me I'll zoom this a little bit. Please play along at home. Please put your answers into the comments. Um, okay. Every time a blank rings, an angel gets its wings. — Every bell. — Bell. Very good. Um, charging animal in the Lamborghini logo. — Charging. Oh, is it's like a It's like — Yeah, bull. — A bull. Oh, yeah. No, I thought it was a Oh, cat animal or — I thought it was too. I If I didn't have those letters, I would have said like puma or something. — Um, okay. So, we have three of these to make. Feel poorly. And I haven't done this um level before. — Uh I think it's ale because it's like it's like — feeling. — Okay. Deep frying liquid oil. Nice. — Hooting bird. — Owl. — That's fun. — Uh hard precipitation. I think it's the first letter that we have to change. — Oh, I don't know. — I think it's sleet. — Yeah, there we go. Piece of paper. — You don't think it's hard enough for precipitation? Sheet. — Sheet. It's harder than like your average precipitation. — Yeah. I thought sleep was like um halfmelted snow on the ground. — I think it's the freezing rain on the ground. — Yeah. — Being a ha coup. — Um buying animal — sheep. Okay, so this is where things get wacky. Um, we made three words, — okay? — And there are three transformations and our goal is to change each of these words into the same final answer. So for one of them, we're going to do a rhyme with it. Another we're going to add a letter, an anagram, and the last one is going to be um whole into part as in like if it's bull, it could be a part. horn, for example. It's one part of it. — Um, but we don't but like part of the game is figuring out which goes where. add a letter and anagram. — And I don't actually know the answer. — Please againird put your guesses in the chat. — Rhyme. — Um, okay. Part of a sheep is fleece. — Yeah. — Uh, bull has horns. — Owl is okay. — Beak. — But that doesn't rhyme with sheep — or bull. — So, wait. So, we were trying to try to find one part of one of these that rhymes with one of the other. — Yeah, one of these. Yeah, exactly. One's gonna go into the rhyme bucket. — H like — um — and what's this going to be the anagram one? — Wool. — Um — bull wool. — Wool. — Bull. Wool. Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it. Okay. So, uh sheep is the whole one to part. — Bull is the rhyme. — The rhyme and you add an O to wool and to owl and get wool. — Oh, great. — That was amazing. — Whoa. — We did it. — Hooray. Okay, that excellent, excellent work. — Um, we finished exactly three minutes. Okay, another word puzzle or uh logic puzzle. — Logic puzzle. — Okay, awesome. — Um, this is Have you ever done uh like nonograms or pickross before? — Nope. — Um, this is a logic puzzle form. I think we'll do Let's do this one. Um, where the numbers on the rows tell the two means that two of these are filled in the row. Okay. — And in the columns, it's the same deal. Eight means that eight are the eight of these are filmed in filled in. — Um and if there's two one that means there's two filled in some number of x's a one — and so you can just fill it in sort of piece by piece and like okay nice place to start was with the zeros here. — Um — and then for example like we can do this eight because this is 10 high so we know these are all filled in. — Okay. Um, we kind of nice little ASMR sounds. — Seven will be everybody but one. — Yeah, exactly. So, you can sort of like count down from the top. Seven. — So, these are already filled in by one. — Yeah. — Right. So, those count Oh, they're one one. Yeah. — Yeah. So, we've done our one one. Um, so now we can do like this four for example. — Oops. I did X's. Do you Would you like to steer? — No. You happy? — Yeah. I'm happy to just watch you. Um, so we could do one there because that's two and one one. — I see. Well, we don't know which of these two the two is going to be, — right? — But with this, we do know there's a two here. — Okay. And then we can do this one, too. — What do you think it's going to be? — So, they're all picture. Like, it's going to be a picture. That's why I love these. These are some of my favorite logic puzzles because they're a picture in the end. And in fact, for this one, it's all an image from a TED animation. It's a giraffe putting its hand on another giraffe's neck. — It's like a comfort giraffe. — Saying yes, it's going to be okay. — You're not as tall as I am, but that is okay. — That kind of giraffe in my life. — Um, okay. So, we've got one. So, that could be either there or there. — Yeah, I think we can do the seven now. Yeah. Right. — Seven. — And then two can be either there or there. — Wow. This is I'm like not sure how to calibrate my brain to do this. — Yeah. It also — 221. So this one has to be — Yes. Perfect. And then we can continue this one. Make that across. — And then I guess just that one. — What is it? Oh, it's a music. — Yeah. Music notes. — Yay. That's fun. Wait, so are these all games you can play online? These are games that you can play daily on ted. comgames. I know. — Yeah. It's really fun. I — feel like everybody has their own little game widget. And I'm so I have to break Sudoku on my phone because I go too hard on it. — Really? — Yeah. — Like how hard are we talking? — Hours. — Yeah. — If I Yeah. — Just like one Sudoku after another. — Uhhuh. — So, okay. So, and not to knock Sudoku, I like Sudoku, but at the end of Sudoku, you just have a grid of numbers. And that's why I like this one. Like this has always been this was actually my gateway into like puzzles. Yeah. My mom got me like a book of like of paint by number that goes by a bunch of names that the games magazine put out and then like it's so satisfying because in the end you've made pixel art. And in fact for this game um we like the constructors are all tattoo artists. — Um and so we just get some like nice fun art in our lives — that you can get tattooed on your body later. — And I have every time I saw the level — Yeah. You just do. You can see my arms. — It'd be pretty cool. — That's so tough. — Yeah. — Yeah, it's really tough. Yeah, — I know. That's what I am. — Yeah. — Um well, Simone, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been such a pleasure playing with you. Uh you did really great with the Lego bricks. — I'm sorry for shaming you for not kissing my mermaid. Was that I could have done a better job. — That mermaid like I think needed to see a doctor. — Yeah. No, she she'd lost her arms and torso, but she finds a torso. — Yeah. Yeah, she's very — She was pure uh pure in the wave of — She's a mermaid on GLP1. She's very skinny. Just a worm. — That's the world we live in now. — Yeah. — Um but thank you again. And um so uh next up we have um Alexander is going to be back where um with an unmissable interview with the CEO of Dude Perfect. But first, we have a TED animation that is um that is uh about one of the best games ever made, especially if you're ever in a restaurant and you make eye contact with a random baby. I think we've all been there. And uh if you haven't guessed what it is, you'll see it in a second. — In Italy, it's called Joo. Palestinians say, and in Japan, it's Ba. But in every language, the response is usually the same. Peekab-boo is a near universal source of laughter and connection for infants and adults. It's the first game that almost everyone plays. So, what is it about this goofy game that babies love so much? While infants develop at different rates, many cognitive and motor abilities emerge in a certain order. For example, while 6-month-olds can typically grab things and then promptly drop them, walking and talking generally begin around 12 months, this timeline was first formally charted in 1936 by Swiss psychologist Jean Pia. And while most modern researchers agree this process is more fluid than Pia believed, the early developments he identified are key for understanding peekaboo. First is face processing. This happens almost immediately. Newborns as young as 2 days old can recognize their caregivers faces. Then around 6 to 10 weeks, babies will begin social smiling. This is when they notice nearby laughing or smiling faces and start to mimic them. At 2 to 4 months, they may begin to understand cause and effect. And finally, between 4 and 7 months, they learn object permanence. Pia described this as the understanding that people and objects continue to exist even when you can't see them. So before this period, out of sight can literally mean out of mind, making hiding your face akin to a magic trick. Before object permanence, this disappearing act can range from confusing to pleasantly surprising. But by 9 months, these developments are working together for peak peekaboo performance. At this age, infants can focus on the game longer, predict the timing of the reveal, and even look for the hidden object or person. And since infants learn about the world through play, Peekab-boo is one of their first teachers. In one study, 11-month-olds were shown a barrier, the bottom of which was hidden behind a screen. Then researchers rolled balls and toy cars behind the screen, removing it afterwards to show that the toys had either stopped at the barrier as expected or somehow gone through it. Infants shown these seemingly magical toys showed more interest in them afterwards, even ignoring new objects in favor of the toys that challenged their expectations. The social expectations Peekaboo develops may be even more important. The game features several hallmarks of what researchers call social play. Eye contact, turn taking, and joint attention. These skills are the foundation of human conversation. And since it's a conversation, what the adult does matters. Just as caregivers learn to read their infant's cries and verbal cues, babies learn how adults respond to their behavior. Some play researchers call this back and forth serve and return interaction. And peekab-boo is a prime example. This call and response structure is also why some psychologists describe peekab-boo as a baby's first joke. It's an interaction where the format is reliable, but the content is surprising. As other motor and cognitive abilities develop, this foundation of social skills and object permanence informs various kinds of play. Once kids begin walking and talking, peekab-boo usually evolves into hideand seek. Though their hiding isn't usually very good at this age due to poor impulse control and a lack of theory of mind. This is the ability to understand, imagine, and predict other people's mental states. Without it, a child might think they're hidden simply by covering their own eyes. After all, if they can't see you, shortly you can't see them. Once theory of mind develops around age 3 or four, kids can begin playing pretend together. All occupying a shared imaginary world, though even the most cooperative pretend play is often sprinkled with peekaboo style surprises. By ages five and six, language expands to inform more playful negotiation, leading to games with more complicated rules. After this point, most kids favorite types of play are more determined by their personalities and interests than their cognitive development. But no matter what play they pursue, as adults, they'll likely wind up playing peekab-boo again. This time from an allnew perspective. Hello and welcome back to the studio at PlayT. I'm Alexandra Panzer and as part of our day celebrating all things play, we are going to be sitting down and chatting with CEO of one of the most popular channels on YouTube. I'm talking 65 million subscribers popular. Uh we're here with Andrew Yaffy, CEO of Dude Perfect. It's sports. It's comedy. It's in a word antics. And Andrew helps make it all happen. All right, Andrew. — Hi, Andrew. Hi. — Thanks for joining us. — Thanks so much for having me. — My pleasure. Um, okay. So for anyone who has like just turned on the internet today, can you tell us a little bit about uh Dude Perfect and how you got involved? — I would love to. Uh Dude Perfect started 17 years ago, the very dawn of the internet — before I was born. — Yes. Uh early YouTube days, five friends who were playing in a backyard at Texas A& M University. — Uh throwing standing on the roof of their house, throwing a basketball off it into a hoop. and they filmed that uh and called it Backyard Stuntman. Posted it to a little known website called YouTube at the time. — It went viral, which at the time was 50,000 views. — Uh and later that week got a call from Good Morning America. And they said, "We saw your video. We'd love to have you guys on. " And from there, the guys continued making things that they thought were fun, filming what they were doing in their lives, challenges and uh stunts and antics with each other. Uh and it just continued to grow and grow and now we are a fully scaled sports media and entertainment company that looks to inspire play. — That Well, exactly. So that's your mantra is to inspire play, right? It is. — So what is that? What does that look like and how does your work online inspire people offline? — Yeah, you know, we our core audience is six to 14 year olds. Like that's the sweet spot, the super fans. Uh and — we take a lot of responsibility in that and we think it's really important that um kids love us but parents trust us. And one of the things we look to do is create incredibly compelling content, but that wants uh those kid fans to go try to do something. — Yeah. — Um and there is nothing more playful and human and global than friends uh experimenting, right? That's ultimately what it is. Sports happens to be our platform. But when our guys do, and we hear it from parents all the time, our guys will do a trick shot of some sort, throwing a object or flipping a bottle, and kids will see a 10-minute video and then go try it for two hours. — Yeah. — And we love that. And we've now started, we have a whole um series we call the trickshot of the month where we challenge our audience to go come up with their own trick shots and submit them. And so every month we're getting thousands and thousands of submissions go from kids across the internet. — What's the wildest trick shot you've gotten? Or do you have a favorite? — Uh let's see. Um there's so many good ones. Uh usually it is, you know, it's hard to come up with new ones, especially when our guys have been doing it for 17 years. — Um it's usually when a really little kid does something. Go. — I have a seven-year-old and a 5-year-old and they — they're not quite they're aspiring trickshot artists. Um, so I love when I we get the submissions from the younger kids of them trying to do something crazy. Always safe. We always make sure there's parental supervision. Uh, but it's uh it's a lot of fun stuff to see. — Well, I don't know if you caught my trick shot earlier, but I caught a basketball on camera, so I should submit. I we'll cut it and I'll submit it. That's perfect. — I know a guy. I can get you in the contest. — Okay, great. Um, yeah. So, well, your target audience is um young people and families, right? So, — how do you have any advice for parents who are trying to engage with content together, make this like screen experience, something that they can share and — Yeah. — I mean, I would say the first thing is — pick content that you like too, — right? Like 80% of our content is cofud between parents and kids. Nice. — Uh which we love. We cherish that, right? Our sweet spot is uh that you know kids love us and parents at a minimum tolerate us and you know when we bring in top sports stars or celebrities or do funny things like we see playfulness in adults. Actually, um earlier this week, we hosted a conference at our office and it was uh we had 200 adults come through uh at the end of the day and our office is uh there's a football field and there's a basketball court and a pickle ball court and a mini golf course. — Nice office. — It's really nice. Uh it's great. — We have Selzer on tap. We don't get a lot of work done, but uh but whenever adults come into our office, they naturally start to play — that we sounds ridiculous to say it out loud. There was a gong hanging from the soccer net — and three people came up with a game on their own to see who could throw a football, a baseball, and a pickle ball from the football field to hit the gong first. And it was two teams then competed. And it's just that natural spirit of uh experimentation that adults love too. And so I often think it's one, pick the right content to sit with your kids and watch. And then two, — go out in the driveway or sit on the floor, get down at their level and do the thing with them because when they show that spark of excitement, — double down on it and find that thing. And it doesn't have to be a fully formed game. It doesn't have to be an hour of board games, but if it's five minutes of flipping a bottle with a kid, — I'm pretty sure the adults going to have a good time, too. — Yeah. Well, and that's what I love. I love that first video of just a bunch of friends hanging out in a backyard kind of just like trying to one up each other with these trick shots. And it I love it, which so does the whole internet by the way. It's a very popular video. Um but uh that it reminds me of that feeling when you were a kid of just being like bored. Yeah. — And letting that boredom just like inspire you to find stakes and create stakes for each other. So um I get Okay, so my question for you, you're a very cool grown-up with a cool job. Um and like a lot of cool jobs, came from the NBA, very cool. Do you ever let yourself get bored? Um, you know, I was actually reflecting earlier in one of the sessions that — I need to uh install some more boredom time in my day. Yeah, — I'm someone I like many adults am too addicted to my phone connected and I find the instant — I feel that tinge of boredom, — I tend to look at it and find some stimulus. Yeah. And — I'm a daydreamer by heart. nature. Uh, and I want to it's one of the one of my New Year's resolutions in May is to uh, you know, now do a little bit more daydreaming because I think it's really inspirational. So, I don't think we do enough. — Yeah. What is So, what does that look like? How do we make more space to How are you going to be bored? What how are you going to daydream? Um, one thing I do I often I'm a voracious podcast and audiobook listener and I think it's probably too much that okay walks I don't need audio on every walk I go on. — Uh I can take an hour a day and I have a brick highly recommend which is a device that blocks your phone. — Um I'm going to start — doing that for several hours during the workday uh just to give me some space. already do it when I'm home with my family. Um, but doing it more during the workday because I like it resonated so much when one of the speakers said — it's those moments of connection that are unexpected. That's where real ideas and creativity and fun come from. — Absolutely. — It's funny you I see I was reflecting also, you know, our guys at heart love to play with each other, right? That's where it started. And as we've grown up as a company, the natural tendency is we're gonna script more. We're gonna have more people on set. We're gonna have safety protocols and our insurance and brand partners all come to the set. And they've given me the feedback of like, well, it's great that we now we went from having one guy with a phone to now a full-scale production crew, — but it feels like work. — And it's like, we can't make good content when it feels like work. We need it to feel like play. Like that's the beauty of the content. — And so there's this balance that we strike of like we want it to be bigger, safe, we want it to be more professional, — right, but still live. — They're not actors, you know? They're they need to be playful because that's what the audience sees and responds to. So, um, I want to make sure that they have space to play and I want to make sure that I have space to daydream and play as well. So, — I love that. Okay. Well, okay. So, my last question for you, um, it's a two-part question. The first part is um are you guys like best friends? — Uh we're colleagues. — Okay. All right. Yeah. — But do you Okay. So — we hang out a lot. — We spend a lot of time together. — There you go. Yeah. Uh it's a special brand of friendship colleague. It's like very Yeah. Um but this partnership was born out of friendship. Do you have any advice for — adults who want to use play to try and make their relationship stronger? Um, I think it's really hard to plan it. Like that's the I think too often we as adults are like, "Okay, this is my playtime. — This is my fun time. " I think it really is more about the mentality that you approach. Yeah. Everything that you do. How do you, and that's what I see at our company, which is in this most serious of meetings, sometimes the most the best creative ideas will come up, right? And how do we allow that to happen, right? That we can't be a super structured. This is the meeting about finance and this is the like that goes against everything that we want to be. — Uh and so really leaning in and allowing play to be to and creativity and unstruct that unstructured nature to really undergard the whole culture. Um and whether that's in a friendship in a group of friends or whether that's uh at a company. Um, I think that's really important to be able to have that base layer of just like, hey, listen, let's not take ourselves too seriously. Let's be able to take a step back and engage the silly part of our brains. Uh, because that's where good ideas and also just a more enjoyable experience come from. — Absolutely. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Andy, for joining us. — Um, all right. So, coming up, we have more interviews with some of our favorite creators. Uh, but first, have you ever had an imaginary friend? No judgment. Mine's actually here with us right now. You just can't see her because she's off camera. Um, but next up, we have a TED animation about how having an imaginary friend is kind of a flex. So, check it out. Amiia and her friend Zela have been inseparable for nearly a year. They share secrets, play games, and rule over imaginary kingdoms. Aiyia loves to talk, and Zelba is a great listener. Aiyah sometimes has bad ideas, and Zela goes along with them anyway. Amii is very real, and Zela is not. Some parents worry about their child having playmates they can't see or hear. But imaginary companions are a normal part of psychological development for many kids. In fact, they even provide a special kind of support real friends can't. But to understand this, we first need to explore what leads certain kids to create these fictional figures. Most often, their inventors are simply looking for someone to play with. Imaginary friends are typically created by children roughly 3 to four years old who lack siblings of a similar age. These kids tend to be socially outgoing. They like company, so they invent more of it. And while almost all kids enjoy playing pretend, children with invisible companions are especially fond of makebelieve. One study even found these kids were better storytellers, suggesting that imagining friends might help with linguistic and cognitive development. Outside a love of fantasy, and socializing, experts haven't found any meaningful differences in personality, intelligence, or shyness between kids who do and do not have imaginary friends. However, the invisible characters themselves couldn't be more different. They can be animals, real or fictional. Humans of all ages, shapes, and sizes, with features straight out of a fairy tale. Some come alone. Others have a gaggle of imaginary friends and family. They can even be what researchers call personified objects. Stuffed animals or toys brought to life by the imagination. And these manifestations vary from place to place. A 2004 study found roughly 67% of US kids under 8 had invisible companions. While in Japan, personified objects were much more common. These fictional figures don't just look different. They also fill a variety of roles. Many are playmates and confidants, but others are scapegoats, errand buddies, or babies in need of care. This wide range is why researchers typically call them invisible or imaginary companions since they're not always friends. In fact, researchers have even reported children who fight with their imaginary companion or are actively afraid of them. These situations can concern parents. But not only are they totally normal, they highlight the special power of imaginary companions. Each of these characters is designed to fulfill their creators needs or wants. By creating a scary invisible companion, a child might be experimenting with feeling fear and how to conquer it. Negotiating imaginary disagreements lets kids practice dealing with conflict without realworld consequences. And resolving these arguments can help them explore empathy and caregiving. In these ways and more, invisible companions give developing children the agency to explore emotions and social interactions on their terms. And since research consistently shows children know these characters are imaginary, the kids are always in control, even when it doesn't look like it. Some invisible companions stick around through their creators teenage and adult years. But generally, as kids start making friends in school around age five or six, they talk about their imaginary companions less and less often. That said, the time they spent with these fictional figures has lifelong benefits. Research suggests pretend play strengthens a child's theory of mind. This is our ability to understand, imagine, and predict other people's mental states. a skill that can help kids develop empathy and build relationships. And while we might stop speaking to our invisible companions, we never stop talking to ourselves. When you rehearse a difficult conversation in the shower or talk through your problems to a pet, you're using the same skills you learned from your imaginary companions. Talking through your inner monologue to problem solve and regulate your mood. So the next time you see a kid chattering to thin air, know that you're watching the beginning of a lifelong conversation. Hi folks, welcome back. I'm Alexandra Panzer and you're in the TED studio for Play at TED. If you're a fan of teeny tiny little handdrawn and animated worlds, you're probably already familiar with our next guest. Um, she was named the number one Instagram account to follow by MTV and Buzzfeed. We're talking to the award-winning illustrator, animator, and storyteller Rachel Riyle. — Hi, Rachel. Thanks for joining us. — Thank you. Thanks for having me. — Oh my goodness. Our pleasure. Um, okay, Rachel, can you tell us a little bit about what you do, who you are, and your art? — Yeah, absolutely. So, I am a self-taught animator. I started animating back in 2013. That's when MTV named me the best to follow. So, I'm really holding on to that title. — Yeah, keep it. — I'm gonna hold it on a year. — Yeah, — it's been a while. Um but um since I've just evolved it into a career where I do animation, illustration, and storytelling full-time for different brands and uh different projects just out of passion and curiosity of my own. — That's amazing. Okay. Wait, I want to focus on you refer to yourself as self-taught. — Um okay, so again, today we're celebrating play and we're trying to understand the role it plays. Oh, I'm not the first person to have done that today. um in how we work and learn and uh all aspects of our life. So, so for you, how does play um uh help you learn? What does that look like? — Oh, well, it's um it's a joyful process also kind of like a painful but not um to put yourself to be an adult and put yourself in that childlike mindset of what can I make? how can I make it in a day and age where it's like make go do more and to just be present in the process of how could I make this come to life or what can I create out of this time that I have. Um I feel like so much of my art comes from a place of just curiosity and diving into my creative approach and sometimes I put out pieces that maybe I'm not very proud of. But it's also always a learning step to understanding new processes and growing my craft and ultimately telling stories in new and exciting ways as an artist. — I love that. — Yeah. So when you get into that zone where because you're this is your profession now where you're like output output like I need to make these deadlines and whatever else. How do you pull yourself back? How do you get back into that sense of exploration and curiosity that kind of got you started in the first place? That's a great question and I feel like I'm in that season of play right now where um if I am the age that I am 22 — same — um plus a couple um if I'm that age and I struggle with the feeling of um pressure I don't know how younger generations are handling that you know — that need to create or that or you know the pressure to put out um and so I have been actually working on a piece that I've in Lost for like two and a half months now and it's to the 302nd mark of um how long it plays for right now and it's been an interesting thing of um really appreciating that time that I've put into it and I'm currently the only person who has seen this piece play so far and I feel like I'm lost in the play like I'm back to the art table. — No one's seeing it yet and no one's judging it or you know anything yet. So, um I think that I push myself to just enjoy that process because that process doesn't always come to be with yourself, with your craft, playing in whatever you are creating without any other voices or noise around you. It's just you and the piece. — Yeah. So, I'm in it right now. — Oh, yay. Congratulations. — Thank you. Um Yeah. Well, and that's funny. You know, we talk a lot here today about um incorporating play into schools and into our workplace and everything, but we're, you know, the elephant in the room is like in those environments, we're also being judged. We're being assessed. — Yeah. — Um and uh Yeah. So, how do you manage that as someone who it sounds like your work springs from this place of joy? Um how do you handle that kind of uh yeah expectations and uh worrying about yeah other people's assessment? — Um it's definitely been a journey and I think there are good days and there are bad days around it but um knowing that ultimately my art has been the number one thing that speaks the best for myself. So, if I'm going through a season where maybe I don't feel like I'm thriving in my craft or I'm productive in my craft, ultimately that piece that I'm creating will be what speaks to like it will open the doors that are ahead and it will do better work than I could ever do of like using my voice to say how I feel. Like my art says the message and it gets it out there. So, I trust that process that playing in my craft will then lead to something bigger than I'm capable to do without making the art in the first place. — Yeah, trust sounds like it's a big trusting yourself — and chocolate. — Yeah, — chocolate. Yeah. Um, do you have a favorite animation that you've made or one that means a lot to you? — That's a great question. Um, gosh, shoot. I'll say the one that I'm working on right now. I just got back from Japan and I've been working on a passion piece about it. Um, and so I'm very proud of it. Hopefully going to come out like next week if I get it done when I get it done. — Um, and you got it on record now. — Yeah, I got it on record. — Um, yeah, I would say that always the piece that I'm working on seems to be my new favorite. Um, — that's the best. — It's the best. — That's what we want. — Yeah. — Wow. So, um, okay. We've talked a lot about uh your practice. I'm curious how your art and how your approach to art making and your sense of play influences other aspects of your life or do you find a way to to take that sense of play and apply it to other parts of your life? — Yeah, absolutely. I just got to visit um with a really great family friend of mine and um their daughter Ava and I connect over art. I love playing with kids in art because it's the most free that I feel of being at a table. — Like one day we worked on drawing like a Malibu beach house. The next day we're drawing horses, which I'm terrible at. But we were just playing and um I surprised her. I um contacted her school and became I came in and surprised her to be the art teacher for the day, which was so much fun to see her like freak out that I was there and then um just play with the kids for like an hour straight. And yeah, so I love to incorporate particularly around kids like however I can make a day like a child's day better by creating art with them or making art for them, writing them letters or whatever. That's how I incorporate it into my life. Yeah. — Amazing. Um do you I know you have actually worked with LEGO before, right? Yeah. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that partnership? — Yeah, definitely. I've had the um I'm very happy to have worked with them a number of times through different umbrellas, but my favorite time that I worked with them um was when it was a season of me creating like new and different types of art and I was putting it out on my channel and just trying new things, which is very challenging as an artist. It's vulnerable. It's uncomfortable, — especially if you're known for a certain style, — a certain style. And um but I just trusted the process and put some art out and I kept doing it as uncomfortable as it was. But unbeknownst to me, LEGO was watching my channel and they were about to launch a campaign highlighting people who are challenging themselves to grow in their craft. And they were watching my art evolve and they're like, "We want you to be a part of this educational division. " And so, um, we got to do videos for, um, kids that were played in schools and like challenging people to always be pushing themselves to grow creatively and through play. — Yeah. Beautiful. — Um, okay. Well, with uh a couple minutes left here, I wondered if you would um play a little uh game with me. — Yeah, absolutely. In the spirit of play. It's not poker, but we can talk later. All right. Um but um yeah, so basically I just wanted to ask you inspired by some of your earlier work, I wanted to ask you a series of teeny tiny questions. — Please, please. — Okay, first question. — Yeah. — If you were a teeny tiny mouse living in a teeny tiny house. — Yeah. — Um what would be your bed? A walnut shell? — Oh. — A matchbox or a pad of butter? Um gosh, I would say the butter. — Yeah. Because then I could also use it for a slide on a hot summer day or something. — It's soft. — Yeah, it's soft. — Absolutely. Right answer. Okay, next question. What's better, a thimble, — a Barbie shoe, — or a really tiny spoon? — Um, probably the spoon because you can eat chocolate. — Okay. All right. We're plowing through these. Someone's an expert. Um, okay. Last one. If you were, say, a teeny tiny mouse living in, house, — um, what would you use as a hat? A button, — a peanut, or an empty coffee creamer pod. — Um, I would say the button because it would look like a beret. — That's exactly what I was thinking. It's — Yes, exactly. — Rachel, it's been a pleasure talking to you. — Likewise. Thank you for having me. — Thank you for joining us. All right, so coming up shortly, we'll be playing more games with YouTube sensation and Lego brick connoisseur Emosaurus. But first, check out this video from TED speaker Steven Johnson on some of on how some of our species most innovative technologies are not made out of necessity, but out of that strange delightful sense of play. Roughly 43,000 years ago, a young cave bear died in the rolling hills on the northwest border of modern-day Slovenia. A thousand years later, a mammoth died in southern Germany. A few centuries after that, a griffin vulture also died in the same vicinity. And we know almost nothing about how these animals met their deaths. But these different creatures dispersed across both time and space did share one remarkable fate. After their deaths, a bone from each of their skeletons was crafted by human hands into a flute. Think about that for a second. Imagine you're a caveman 40,000 years ago. You've mastered fire. You've built simple tools for hunting. and you've learned how to craft garments from animal skins to keep yourself warm in the winter. What would you choose to invent next? It seems preposterous that you would invent the flute, a tool that created useless vibrations and air molecules. But that is exactly what our ancestors did. Now, this turns out to be surprisingly common in the history of innovation. Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village. next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing. Many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics, and society. Take what may be the most important invention of modern times, programmable computers. Now, the standard story is that computers descend from military technology since many of the early computers were designed specifically to crack wartime codes or calculate rocket trajectories. But in fact, the origins of the modern computer are much more playful, even musical than you might imagine. The idea behind the flute, or just pushing air through tubes to make a sound, was eventually modified to create the first organ more than 2,000 years ago. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of triggering sounds by pressing small levers with our fingers, inventing the first musical keyboard. Now, keyboards evolved from organs to clavicords to harpsacords to the piano until the middle of the 19th century when a bunch of inventors finally hit on the idea of using a keyboard to trigger not sounds but letters. In fact, the very first typewriter was originally called the writing harps accord. Flutes and music led to even more powerful breakthroughs. About a thousand years ago, at the height of the Islamic Renaissance, three brothers in Baghdad designed a device that was an automated organ. They called it the instrument that plays itself. Now, the instrument was basically a giant music box. The organ could be trained to play various songs by using instructions encoded by placing pins on a rotating cylinder. And if you wanted the machine to play a different song, you just swapped a new cylinder in with a different code on it. This instrument was the first of its kind. It was programmable. Now, conceptually, this was a massive leap forward. The whole idea of hardware and software becomes thinkable for the first time with this invention. And that incredibly powerful concept didn't come to us as an instrument of war or of conquest or necessity at all. It came from the strange delight of watching a machine play music. In fact, the idea of programmable machines was exclusively kept alive by music for about 700 years. In the 1700s, music-making machines became the play things of the Parisian elite. Showman used the same coded cylinders to control the physical movements of what were called automata, an early kind of robot. One of the most famous of those robots was, you guessed it, an automated flute player designed by a brilliant French inventor named Jacqu Deansson. And as Vocans was designing his robot musician, he had another idea. If you could program a machine to make pleasing sounds, why not program it to weave delightful patterns of color out of cloth? Instead of using the pins of the cylinder to represent musical notes, they would represent threads with different colors. If you wanted a new pattern for your fabric, you just programmed a new cylinder. This was the first programmable loom. Now, the cylinders were too expensive and timeconuming to make. But a half century later, another French inventor named Jakard hit upon the brilliant idea of using paper punched cards instead of metal cylinders. Paper turned out to be much cheaper and more flexible as a way of programming the device. That punch card system inspired Victorian inventor Charles Babage to create his analytical engine, the first true programmable computer ever designed. and punch guards were used by computer programmers as late as the 1970s. So ask yourself this question, what really made the modern computer possible? Yes, the military involvement is an important part of the story. But inventing a computer also required other building blocks. Music boxes, toy robot flute players, harpsacord keyboards, colorful patterns woven into fabric. And that's just a small part of the story. There's a long list of worldchanging ideas and technologies that came out of play. Public museums, rubber, probability theory, the insurance business, and many more. Necessity isn't always the mother of invention. The playful state of mind is fundamentally exploratory, seeking out new possibilities in the world around us. And that seeking is why so many experiences that started with simple delight and amusement eventually led us to profound breakthroughs. Now I think this has implications for how we teach kids in school and how we encourage innovation in our workspaces. But thinking about play and delight this way also helps us detect what's coming next. Think about it. If you were sitting there in 1750 trying to figure out the big changes coming to society in the 19th and 20th centuries, automated machines, computers, artificial intelligence, a programmable flute entertaining the Parisian elite would have been as powerful a clue as anything else at the time. It seemed like an amusement at best, not useful in any serious way, but it turned out to be the beginning of a tech revolution that would change the world. You'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun. Hi, if you're just joining us, I'm Alex. I'm the creative director of TED Games, and I'm about to play some of those with a very special guest. Emily uh creates LEGO content as Emma across social media. She's been a LEGO fan since 2017 and with over three million followers, she loves sharing her Lego builds and Lego City with other Lego fans around the world. — Emily, welcome. — Hello, Alex. I am very happy to be here. — I'm so excited that you're here and um I'm so excited to play with Lego bricks with somebody who knows their way around them — a little bit. We'll see. — So, we're going to chat, but I also thought we'd play a game while we chat. All right. — Um we call this Brictionary. It's Lego brick pictionary. Yes. — So, um we're going to draw words out of this hat. — Okay. — Please go ahead. — I can go first. — Yes, please. We're going to both go simultaneously. Don't show it to me. Um and then we're just going to build while we chat. So, I hope you like multitasking. I think so. I'll try. — Oh, yes. I know. I think I know how to build this. Um, — okay. Well, so first of all, while we're doing this, so your content, you build a lot of kits on your videos. How often do you just have a big pile of Lego bricks to play with and build something out of it — semi-regularly? I do love having my Lego bricks sorted. I am very meticulous with my collection. I have multiple different drawers and each little drawer inside these big furniture things. Um, and they're all sorted out and so it's it actually makes it really easy and kind of fun. Um, it is a mess trying to put things back, but it's very nice having it kind of ready to go whenever I want to get creative. — So, you so you'll actually like figure out what you want to make and then go to your drawer and get like the red brick that you have. Do you have them sorted by like shape and color? — A little bit. Sometimes it's it depends how many of the piece I have. If I have a lot of one piece, then I'll probably do it by color as well as piece type. But it really just it kind of depends. — Is there like a recognized Lego brick filing system? — No, unfortunately not. That would make our lives a little bit easier in trying to um organize everything. But it is fun kind of like having bricks together and trying to build something. I'll have like official sets in my Lego city and I will try to build things around the official sets to make it look like a city instead of multiple different sets connected. And so it'll be like a roadway or an ocean in front of little different beach sets that are kind of set on the sand. Um trees. I love building trees. — Yeah. There's a lot of different like fun nature things that we love building in the city. — When you make a tree, is it like this or do you like — It's like a tree. — Oh, it's like Yeah, we build a tree. Okay. Nice. Yeah. — Um, okay. I'm ready for you to guess my first one. I'm going to put it up here so that the audience at home can see it and guess. — Um, I think it's a boat. — Oh, — a helicopter. — Yeah. — Okay. — Yeah. Sound effects are allowed. Okay. Yeah. I'll leave it up there. — Okay. I'm going to draw a new one out. Okay. — I'm going to keep going. Um, okay. So, tell me what play looks like in your life. — Gosh, there's a lot of different ways that I love to play. A lot of it's through with Lego bricks and sets. Um, I love getting creative with it, but it's also fun to It's kind of playful to kind of just like get imaginative with stories. Like in my Lego city, I love doing like search and finds, like finding different like silly things and like thinking about new weird scenarios that I could include there. Like um having a dog park, but then having like some, you know, maybe different animals there. Like how would they interact? like how would different animals interact at a dog park? Um having I don't know weird relationships on the city streets with like robbers or cops, but then also like superheroes kind of intervening. And so I don't know, there's a lot of different ways through that. It's also been really fun kind of exploring play in a new way with my daughter. She's 10 months old and it's been kind of cool seeing play through her eyes. She's still very little, but I can kind of see the play starting to happen. And that's been just incredible. I'll give her like a Duplo brick to hold and that's about all she's doing with it right now. But hopefully later get her started early. — Yeah. Hopefully she'll be doing more with it eventually. — I got a really lucky draw. Are you ready for yours? — Um I'm I'm doing my best with it. You go first. — Okay. Uh yeah, this is um a little — Are they sunglasses? — Not even — glasses. Just glasses. I can't believe I drew that after. — Okay. Um — not planned. — Okay. Here's mine. I'm going to try to do it most with sound effects. Forgive my build skills. — Yeah. And just put it up here and then we can get a close-up shot as you do your sound effects. — Oh, it's definitely a shark. — Yeah, right. It's a very good shark. — I think the top of one — It's the top. — Yeah, — something like a shark. — Instantly recognizable — um my next one's really hard. So, — let me grab another one. — Oh, yeah. Yeah, please. Oh, I've been hogging the hat. — Oh, you're good. Okay, let's see. Um, okay. So, if LEGO came to you tomorrow and said, "Design a kit," what would you do? — I am a very big Scooby fan. Um, I love Scooby-Doo. So, like something related to that would be very fun. Um, I think like I don't know. I love movement in Lego sets. like all of the different arcade um I don't know like carnival rides like roller coasters and like they did like a ferris wheel, a merrygoround. Um so maybe like something new like that could be kind of cool. Maybe like another roller coaster. — Have they done a full-on roller? — They've done two big ones in the past and those were really cool. Um maybe like a new merrygoround. Those are always themed really fun. There's a lot that they could do. Yeah. You have a lot of merrygorounds in your future. — I hope so. — My daughter's five. It took her a little while to like get over the It's like a little scary at first. — Um but uh but now she's super into it and then we can't do a we can't not do the merry ground. We see it. — Um Okay. So my next build is a little impossible. Um — mine feels impossible a little bit too. — Do you like do you put Okay. Do you play Lego outside of your channel? — I do sometimes. So, me and my husband will take Lego sets and do like a date night in kind of thing and we'll build a Lego set together and that's really fun. Um, we'll like maybe put on a movie related to something we're watching. Um, you know, there's like so many different fun like IPs within LEGO. So, like if we're building a Toy Story set, we might put on Toy Story. Um, and so that's really fun. I usually do have a camera going, but it is like it is nice to step away from the social media side of Lego building and just go back to the roots of like just like building for fun. It's always fun, but it's nice to just I don't know, relax and talk and Yeah. Just play. — Yeah. Exactly. Um — this is so bad. But um Okay. — A robot. — Was it actually? — Yeah. That's I didn't cheat. I didn't cheat — because uh if you look at this I don't I mean maybe — Oh, okay. It actually like when I see it on camera, it looks more like a robot than I — Oh, a little bit. I mean, yeah. I mean, it obviously looks like a robot. I guessed it first try. I don't know. I think that's excellent. — Maybe I should have a little more confidence in my building skills. — Here's I kind of have two. Um here's the first one in case you — Okay. Chapo. No bow. Uh, no. Um, maybe if I put it this way and I'm — crown. — Yeah, a crown. — Crown. Very nice. — And then this person has one, but I feel like that was — No, I appreciate it that you actually took the hard route as opposed to when I just did glasses, — had glasses. Um, should we play some more games? — I would love that. — Okay, amazing. Um, I asked you ahead of time what kind of games you like, and I was really excited when you said spelling because we have a spelling game, and I'm not going to put you on the spot. — Okay. Um, I thought we would do it together if that's cool. Maybe we could take turns on words. So, this is our spelling game. It's called Spell Check. Um, it was originally made by a creator channel called Answer in Progress as like sort of a um exploration of how weird the English language is — and they made a game that we really loved and then we expanded on it. So, it starts off with standard spelling. Um, — so you'll hear a word and we have to spell it. — Okay. Do you want to take the first turn? — Yeah. But we can — indehaticable. — Indeathicable. Yeah. — I — Well, you get to — Oh, I get to type it. Oh, I was like spelling B mode. — You can do that. — Indeadable. — You want to go for it? — Yeah. How do I do it? — New book. — Okay. We It was close. We got orange — the G. Newuck. That's my turn. — New. — Okay. I got to hear the meaning. — Soft leather with a rubbed suedelike outer surface. — I've never heard you know this word. — I don't know this word. No. I'm going to go like sort of fun spelling. — Yeah. — New book. — Promulgate. — I can't believe that was right. — That was actually incredible. I kudos. That was great. — Promulgate. — To officially or publicly spread, announce or put forward an idea or rule. — You know, promulgate. — Yeah. Promulgate. — Okay. — Opponency. — Okay. Opponenty. — Opponent. — Okay. What does that mean? — We started with a really hard round. Oppon I know. Good question. opposition, resistance, or the state of being against something. — I feel like I have a guess. — NC E. You think it's an E or an A? — Does that look right? — Like opponent. — Yeah, opponent. Yeah. — All right, — man. Yours are easier. — Civet. A small cat-like mammal or the musky perfume substance it produces. — They're the ones with the coffee. — Civet. S or Civ C. You think so? — Yeah. — I think it's a B. — C. Civet. — Civet. Okay, — let's go for it. — Okay, it was close. It just one letter out. Okay. All right. Next round. — Um Okay, this is Okay, so this round we're going to hear the definition and we both have to guess the word and spell it. And the earlier that we buzz in, the more points we get. — Okay. — So, you want first turn? — I'll let you have first. — Okay, I'll take Okay. Yeah. What if it's like — spoon? — The study of human movement and physical activity. It examines how movement relates to health. — Can I buzz in? — Oh, yeah. — Geography. — Well, it's uh — I don't know. — Maybe — at a high level. — Yeah, definitely Let's see. — Do I just enter? — Ah, kinesthesiology. — Man, I was thinking like movement. — No. Yeah, like migration. Yeah. I like your answer, too. Uh, okay. You want So, now it could be officially your turn. — Oh, okay. Sorry, I stole no. It's totally fine. a system of administration carried out by non-eleed officials working within a structured hierarchy. — Okay, I think I know what um and it's I think it's bureaucracy. — Oh, yeah. No, that can sound right. — It's a it's a doozy, but I think I know how to spell it. Bureau bure maybe that is that o extraneous bureau. Is there no there or not? No, I think there's not. — Yes. — Oh, nice. the release or purging of strong emotion, especially through art. — It can also mean any emotional clearing or renewal that brings relief from tension. — Uh what's the word? It's like um at the end of a play — and you're like, — "Okay, let's just spell anything. " — Anything? — Yeah. Okay. — Okay. We could spell duma. It's not the duma. That's probably harder to spell than — That might be harder to spell. — Uh, catharsis. It's catharsis. — Yeah. Okay. I'll let you turn. — Yeah, I think I can do it. — Yeah, that looks spot on. — Yes. — Okay, I got you spelled one right. — Yeah. Yeah, that was beautiful. — Very cathartic. — Yes. — Okay. In this round, — we've taken a excerpt from a TED talk and there's a missing word and we have to spell that word. — Okay. For the last 20 years, I've been teaching about behavioral endocrinology. — Okay. — No problem. Endocrinology. — Yeah. — I think you nailed it. — Yeah, I think so. Right. — Yes. — Got it. — That round you can have three chances and three tries and we didn't even need them. — Oh, nice. — Um Okay, last round. So, this is a really hard word. — Okay. Um, but we can take clues like we can see how long it is. — Crustaceiology. Of course. — Yes. — I'm guessing the study of crustaceians. — I would think so. — Should we see if that's the scientific study of crustaceian? — Okay. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it's like something totally different. — Yeah. I know you have a science background. — I do. I did not study crations. — You weren't a crustaceiologist. — I was not a crustace. — Did you consider it briefly? — Possibly. — Do you know that uh everything keeps evolving into crabs? Is that — crabs have independently evolved five times? — We haven't we didn't learn that in school in data science school. Crabs are the final form of everything. — Is that Are we eventually going to be crabs? — I think we're on the way. — Wow. — Yeah. I don't know like what the intermediate steps are, but the end — I wonder how long it'll take for us to get there. — A few more years at this rate. Okay. Uh crustation. — Okay. Well, so we can try to type it in, but we can reveal specific letters or we can reveal the length as well. — So maybe we should try the word first. See how we're feeling about it. — Okay. Yeah, let's do that. I like that. — You seemed confident. — Soiology. — Stay. — I think C is my guess. — I think that's going to be an E. But um — Oh, okay. Yeah. — But should we reveal that one? That letter? — Yeah, let's reveal that one. — Yeah, you got it. — Do we feel good about the rest of the word? Please, please type in your guesses on the live stream, too. — Yes. — Um, okay. — I feel good. You feel good? — I feel as good as I'm ever gonna feel about this word. — I wouldn't change anything. — Okay, let's do it. — Yeah. So, that's like a double or nothing round. Okay. Like, if you got that wrong, you got no points, but we got times 2. 3. That's awesome. 543 points. — Is I think we're doing good, right? — so good. — I feel good with that. — Um, okay. We have just enough time to spell a little more. Or we can play. We don't have time for a full trivia game. Or we can do a word game. — You want to keep spelling? I feel like we've got a good spelling thing going on. — I do. Did you ever do a spelling bee? Do you remember like what — I remember being so stressed about spelling bees in school and um and I like the reason I like this game is because I don't have to do it in front of an audience. — Yeah. — And yet here we are — kind of right. — Um but doing it together like there's never collaborative spelling bees and so I feel a lot better about what we're doing. — Yeah. No, I feel good. — Yeah. Okay. We'll at least start some spelling. — Okay. — Oops. — Ultimate. — Oh. — Oh, this is speed round. — Oh, — okay. — Right. — Yeah. — Okay. — Terminal. — Finality. — That looks — resolution. Ah. — KOD. — Yeah. Go. — Conclusion. — Closure. — We aced it. — Nailed it. There's a streak bonus. There's everything. I've never gotten everything right in one of those rounds before. Speed round. — Let's go. — Okay, we got another one from a TED talk. — At first, emotionally charged buzzwords like this feel like enlightenment. — Oh, look. It's still on the previous one. — Okay, let's pretend that doesn't say endocrinology right there. Um, okay. I bugged it out by loading two levels in a row, but look, we got 543 again. — Go us. — Um, Emily, thank you so much for joining. It's such a pleasure to play with Lego bricks with somebody who probably knows every single one of those bricks. Um — I dabble. Yeah, — it's humbling. Um and next up, so Alexandra will be back in a few minutes to interview what's got to be one of the coolest dads ever. And I know dads. Um but first, we have a stopotion treat. This video is by Leroyy's Place, Brooklyn's only monster store. And it was created in collaboration with Ellie Munin. rain tacos raining taco. out. Open your eyes. Your eyes taco. Open your eyes and close your eyes. This rainy taco raining taco eat your eyes close your eyes ty Close your eyes. It's raining taco. — What's up people? That was my favorite song. It's raining tacos by Moses Smith and his son. Welcome back to Play at TED. Uh we're here to remind you that um play is a superpower that you have access to at every stage of your life, whether you're with your friends at work or in class. And here to remind us how play plays an essential I did it again. Play plays. Is anyone keep keeping count? Um how play is an essential part of learning? Uh is YouTube creator Sergey Urban. He is the host of the Dad Lab, one of the most trusted sources online for activities for STEM activities for children and their parents. — Hi, Sergey. — Hello. — Welcome to Play It Ted. — Yeah. Um, before we dive in, I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about the Dad Lab and how you got started. — It's as simple as me being a dad. Uh, and I'm not a teacher or a scientist. I'm just a dad. — A real dad. Dad lab. A real dad. — Exactly. That's where the come the name comes from. The dad just to point where I'm coming from. Uh, yeah. So, I have kids, two kids. Uh, and started doing activities with them. Basically playing with them. uh just doing some kind of educational stuff just were learning numbers, letters, doing some uh crafts uh and that's at some point I started sharing the content take taking photos of the activities and then filming videos of those activities posting on social media and it just kind of spread all around internet all social media and now it's my full-time job for over 10 years now. — Oh my gosh. Amazing. Um well and you actually you have an activity for us to do together here today while we talk. Um would you mind talking us through it? — Fantastic. Yeah because the thing is — uh I have many followers online and people think some of people think okay Zatlab creates videos for kids. That's not what I do. What I do I create videos for parents and I always trying to find something simple but exciting enough. So parent would watch the video and then think ohh yeah I have that those two things at home I can try it tonight with my kids. So idea is always to make it simple exciting and really accessible for parents and today we're trying to take one of those ideas uh and incorporate it into fun game for us. — Okay. — Uh again idea is quite simple. Uh in fact in some 18th century in some uh mathematical Japanese journal they wrote an article uh like a puzzle. So here is a picture uh try to find a way to fold it so many times that you could cut it only once and that's going to be it. And you got to cut out this shape out of this piece of paper. And — that's amazing. So an 18th century puzzle magazine is amazing. Exactly. Uh so and as it turns there is a theorem called uh fold and cut. Simple enough okay to remember. So and it basically says that you can take any shape and fold a piece of paper. Uh so the only kind of thing is uh the shape should be made of straight lines. So you can fold the piece of paper in specific way. So you can just cut only once and you can cut this shape out. — Okay. — And so the simple thing is simple thing same Simple thing hard. Yeah. Simpler than saying simple. Yes. — Yeah. So just a bit of introduction. So let's say here's a square. You want to cut out the square. The simple solution would be uh unprepared and mathematical solution would be to cut the hole and then cut out all these pieces which going to be a lot of kind of a lot of work. — Absolutely. That's how I would do it. — Exactly. But there is a way if you just kind of fold it in half. — Okay. — Just like that. And then you can see if you cut it just three times — you can get the square. — But what about making it even more simple? — So if we fold it like that now we have just two cuts. Okay. — And if you cut it one more time uh if you fold just like that. — One. And you can cut it. — And then you cut it. — You should be able — Yeah. to get a square hole just like that. The again the most amazing thing is not just to hang the hole. It's just having the shape as well. Yeah, it's just like that. — Okay. Wait, I want to try. — Yeah. Go ahead. Now, is the square going to be too simple for you? Uh let's go with something we haven't shown you yet. — Triangle. Uh oh. Wait. Ah. Okay. I was kind of so excited to nail that square. Okay. So, it's three. Okay. — Yeah. We're going to try just simple shapes. The cool thing about that activity is that I'm not sure how historically accurate that is. But apparently uh Betsy Ross used technique of cutting once when she was making the flag of America just making the all the stars. — And the thing is there is a way to figure out you can just either draw the store and star and fold it a few times or you can just follow — simple tricks. Okay. — Okay. Now, I will tell you that this equilateral triangle that I made is not quite equilateral. So, we're going to try to get it right. But, um, but speaking of which, actually, I wanted to ask you. So, um, when you're coming up with these activities to do with your kids or for people to do with their kids, what where are you drawing your inspiration? Is it just from is it based on what you want them to learn, what their interests are, and what materials you have around? How are you coming up with your — Yeah. Um — I love how people want to have one specific answer for all the problems. — There is one like it's like the question how do you educate? — Okay. What is — raise a child? There is like — your approaches. — Some of my approaches there obviously there are lots of different approaches. — Uh one of them being uh first of all when I play I want to have fun myself. — Yeah. And again what what we were talking in the very beginning I'm trying to inspire parents saying that you can have fun like this is one of the activities in fact this activity as long as your son or daughter can uh cut you can do this activity starting with simple shapes and just progress a bit to more difficult ones. — Uh but either way what I want to I want parents to have fun and I'm the same. I'm thinking, oh, there is something exciting that I heard about and I want to try it and why don't we try it with a child together? — It starts with also you having fun. — Exactly. — Yeah. Which is the And I think, you know, we hear from a lot of parents that have this feeling, you know, they know it's important to play with their kids and there's something intimidating about it that play, they either tell themselves, I'm not a creative person or I'm not um you know, I'm exhausted. I just at work all day, like I can't come up with something to do. Um, how do you Yeah. What do you What do you say to parents like that who think of themselves as not creative? By the way, I'm about to crush this triangle. — Okay, let's see what happens. Yeah, — hold on. And by and remember that my triangle was not perfectly drawn. One cut. — One cut. I really hope this did this right. — Congrats. Yeah, it's a beautiful triangle. — Thank you so much. Thank you. Wonderful. — Um yeah sorry. — Yeah. So what I said to those parents uh I mean the thing is again like with parenting with play there is no kind of wrong way of doing it. — Yeah. — The biggest challenge that I face myself and I hear that parents face is that they afraid to start because they're afraid to fail. — Like for example I do a lot of science experiments which are getting simple enough. you're just mixing vinegar, baking soda, something as simple but like with color and stuff. — And parents sometimes don't want to approach that because they're just afraid because like if the child asks something and they don't know, they answer — right — and they the but the reply the answer to that problem solution is so simple. — If you don't know, you just say I don't know. Let's Google it together. — Yes. — As simple as that. Like there is no wrong way of playing. No, no problem if you don't know some stuff and it's people — just like that and it's okay. — I love that and that's such a good reminder. One of the themes that's coming up today a lot is the that failure is an inherent essential ingredient in play, the possibility of failure and uh and riding that line between success and failure or whatever success looks like with play. And I think that that feeling also of saying I don't know is also kind of it's like a release. It creates space for more curiosity. — Yeah. There is no test with wrong marks. It's you just leave your life and then like the kids and again back coming back to the failure. It's not just uh when you play it's like coming back you're growing and you're building your business. There is even an expression like fail fast meaning try everything and you fail through all the things that don't work and finally you find something that works — and it's just being open and just enjoy the things enjoy the process. — Yeah. Well and and the I think also there's this pressure that when you're doing something in a learning environment that you have to uh learn something like a theory or a rule or a mathematical Yeah. practice or something and what do you think about you know these experiments and these activities you do there is a lot of science and math behind all of it is that the is the goal to learn those things do you think that even if you don't learn for example a phys a rule of physics are you still learning something through playing what is your — yeah I mean the thing is some some of the experiments that I do are difficult some of the simple — and My approach is again I don't want I don't teach them deep science behind it all. — The idea is to open their minds that you can combine two simple things and you will get unexpected result with producing some third thing. — Uh just open minders uh and just learn the world around them. — Yeah. — And be brave to try things. — Yeah. The celebrating curiosity. — Exactly. — Yeah. Because I guess well because that is Yeah. the root of all learning. Um, and so for kids themselves, I wonder do you do you bypass that feeling of like, oh, I'm being tricked into learning somehow. This isn't play. This is school. No, — it just depends. But the thing is like sometimes again coming back to people who watch videos online and want to do the activity with the kids. something which happens and uh I have the same kind of problem uh when you prepare activity saying like liquid one should be mixed with liquid two and you get have to get this reaction — and you and you're just setting it all up for the child and saying okay this is exactly what you do — and this is a wrong approach to the thing — because again all the kids they are born curious fantastic good job — thank you — uh all the kids are born curious so if you just give them those liquids and saying okay here is like a play site for you to experiment at some point they will combine those two liquids and they will get to the results that maybe some of the steps going to be messy and unpredictable at first so they the thing that we don't have to we're supposed not to do is to stop them exploring — yeah — that's the failure that is kind of difficult one which is again we have to be open to their experimentation — and again uh coming back to the star I mentioned already uh bets. But apparently Houdini was doing one of these experiments as well. Uh magic tricks when you fold a piece of paper and cut it once. — This is for you. Okay. — And you cut it once just like that — across. Here we go. — And you're supposed to get Yeah. Go ahead. a star. Let's see how it goes. — Fantastic. Yeah. Star. — Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. So, that's how you make lots of stars for American flag. Just lots of cutting and small pieces like that. — Um, that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Sergey. This was really fun. It was great chatting with you. Thank you for joining us here today. — Yeah, my pleasure. Uh, so just a bit challenge for all the viewers out there. Yes. Just try to sit down with the family and try to cut the whole I don't know alphabet or using just one card for every letter. There is no one solution or lots of different solutions but it's a cool ch cool challenge for the whole family for the whole night. It's going to take a while. — That's great. You take that challenge with you. Let's see what you create. Thanks again, Sergey. — Thank you. — Take care. — All right. Um, we have one more interview coming up before we return to the theater. But first, we have a TED animation on the cognitive benefits of risky play and how we can design better playgrounds that promote fun, agency, and development. Stick around. In the 1930s, Danish landscape architect Carl Theodore Sorenson noticed that his neighborhood's children loved playing in old building sites. Watching kids swing from exposed beams, scavenge for scrap materials and hammer together bridges inspired him to transform an abandoned housing estate into a dedicated junk playground. Sorenson's site became a huge success and soon countries throughout Europe were making playgrounds out of derelict building yards and even former World War I bomb sites. These environments might look dangerous, especially to 21st century parents who tend to be far more anxious about their children's safety than previous generations, but research has found these seemingly scary setups teach kids important lessons that standard playgrounds don't. Play is profoundly important for childhood development. Creating games and following rules helps teach problem solving. Moving our bodies through varied terrain helps hone our motor control. And playing with others lets us practice language and refine our social skills. Since play comes naturally to all of us, children are likely to develop these skills in most environments. But researchers have identified a few factors that can maximize these benefits. Chief among them is freedom. Play is all about experimentation and kids need the agency to explore and shape their surroundings without adults getting in the way. The next factor is novelty. Kids are always hungry for new and unpredictable play elements. Finally, they need time to see their plans through. While we could all use more time to play, the best play environments offer freedom and novelty that kids can explore as much or as little as they like. But traditional playgrounds don't offer much flexibility here. Swings, slides, and climbing frames are hardly novel structures. They also have relatively low affordance, a term used by play researchers to indicate how open-ended an object's design is. Items with high affordance, like a sandbox, can be interacted with in many ways. Meanwhile, objects with low affordance, like a slide, were designed with a single use in mind. Even when kids are creative enough to find new uses for low affordance objects, they're still more limited play things. To address these problems, some designers are looking back at Europe's junk playgrounds to create modern adventure playgrounds, big open spaces full of high affordant structures and free play possibilities. Berlin's Collar 37 features scrap and building tools for kids to manipulate. In Tokyo's muddy Harapa Park, children shape water slides, sink holes, and splash pools out of the natural landscape. And in London's Glams Adventurer Playground, kids burn things in fire pits with the help of playworker employees. While some parents worry these unpredictable spaces are too dangerous, play researchers like Ellen Sansitter would say this so-called risky play is essential. Giving kids the space to experiment with fast speeds, high heights, and getting lost helps them develop better judgment and confidence. In fact, risky play is how kids learn to manage risk and keep themselves safe. One study even found that kids were more likely to get seriously injured in traditional playgrounds, perhaps because adventure playgrounds encourage them to be more aware of their surroundings. Risky play also helps develop skills for managing mental health. Experimenting with small doses of uncertainty gets kids used to life being unpredictable, helping them better manage anxiety for years to come. Adventure playgrounds aren't the only places for risky play. Nature playgrounds encouraging kids to explore creeks, caves, and tree climbing combine the perks of risk-taking with the health benefits of connecting with nature. Meanwhile, other designers are working to bring more freedom and novelty to traditional designs. This Philadelphia park features a 30 person mega swing, and Nebraska's Omaha Riverfront playground uses a ribbon of multi-layered decking as a play spine, warping up and down to reveal secret tunnels and rope forests. So, the real key is to design a variety of playgrounds supporting a wide range of activities that promote fun, agency, and a dash of uncertainty, inviting kids to fill in the possibilities. Welcome back to the TED Studio. Next up, we're going to be talking to early childhood educator Monica J. Sutton. She combines her unique teaching style with singing, dancing, and play on her YouTube channel, Miss Monica. — Hi, Monica. — Hi. — Thank you for joining us in the studio. — I'm so excited to be here. So, thank you. — We're excited to have you. Um, okay. Before we dive in, I got lots of questions for you. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do on your YouTube channel and who you are and your background a little bit? — Yes, absolutely. So, my name is Monica J. Sutton, but the children call me Miss Monica. Monica, and I've been an educator for 23 years. I started my career and pretty much my whole teaching career was in New York City as a special education early childhood teacher. — Um, but then when the pandemic hit and parents became teachers, I decided to put my classroom on YouTube on my channel and open up my classroom there. And so now I teach children globally preschool skills through fun and lessons and singing. — I love it. Globally. So just amazing. — Yeah. — Um Okay. So while we're chatting, I wondered if you would play a little game with me. — Okay. Yes. — Um it's a little interview game I call head, chin, table. — I'm not great at naming things. — It's like the song head, shoulders, knees, and toes. — Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the vote of confidence. Basically how it works, there are three rules. Rule number one, at any given point, one of us has to either be scratching our head, touching our chin, or have our hands on the table. — Okay. — Rule number two, if one person changes pose, the other person also has to change pose. — So then I have to go like this. — Yes. And I And like this. Oh my gosh. You got it. And then the third rule is that we can't be doing the same pose at the same time. — Okay. Okay. And we're definitely gonna mess up. — It's a lot to take in. Okay. We're ready. — Okay. Wait. So, let's we'll do we'll just do a little practice. — Okay. Oh, wait. — Yeah. Okay. — Oh. Oh, — two hands. — Okay. — Perfect. We're gonna nail it. Um smile through it. — Yeah. Exactly. Um Okay. So, you are an early childhood educator. Can you talk a little bit about how play shows up? Wait. In your work. Wait. — Oh, I'm supposed to be Okay. Yes, absolutely. Um whether it is in the physical classroom or in whether it's even digitally now that I have a digital classroom play always shows up. I'm intentionally trying to create interactive moments through play. I'm always trying to create fun experience for children. And again that's digitally that's physical it always shows up. Mhm. Um, and I wanted to ask also, um, how so you're we've been talking to a lot of YouTube creators today and they they've been talking about how, uh, they all celebrate play and try to promote play. Um, but this is online content. So, how are you thinking about folks engaging with your work um, uh, in the real world, offline? — That is such a good question. I'm always thinking about connection. Honestly, that is always at the center of my work, connection and play. But if I can maintain that connection piece through the screen, then we can create engagement. So for me, like I just put out a video, it was an episode about colors. And instead of just teaching the colors, red, green, yellow, you know, instead of just teaching it that way, I asked the children, okay, I'm going to hold up a card now. Can you find something green in your home? And then you add the little fun music. D. You have five seconds. D. And they're running around and then I run around, right? You show me going back and forth across the screen and then you come back and say, what did you find? But I'm looking in the camera. What did you find? And then I tell them what I find. And so that's how I intentionally create an interactive moment of play and fun. It's so great. It really is. — No, it really is fun. Um, and so is that how do you have um do you have advice for parents who are um wanting their children to engage with your content or with online content in general? — Absolutely. I think number one, you should always try co-viewing. We call it co-viewing. It's called so many things, but co-viewing. if you're watching with your child. So if I ask them to go find that color, you can pause the video if you want. It is a video, so you can pause it and give them extra time. So maybe my 5 seconds is not enough time. Let them have the extra time they need to go find that color or whatever it is they're doing, but being involved or stopping the video. I like to call it like the pause and connect, right? So you pause the video and then ask them, "What do you think the answer is? " or of whatever it is I'm talking about? " And then even if they get the answer wrong, it's okay because that's what I'm there for. And then together — I'm going to explain it, the parent can explain it. You know, you let the video play. — Um, so it's really just being a part of the lesson with your child because it doesn't it takes away from them just viewing and just being a watcher and then it allows them to be more active in their participating. Yeah. — Yeah. There is something Oh my gosh, I'm realizing how much I talk with my hands. — I know. Me too. and I want to move. So, — should I liberate us from the game? Let's do it. Okay, we're good. Um, yeah, this idea of co- viewing seems really um really powerful because so, you know, so much of um we have these personal screens, we have these tablets and phones and everything and it's so like just between you and a screen, but you know, if we can make it a more social experience, it has that potential. — I agree. Yeah. And it takes away from the scrolling because even little ones, three-year-olds, four-year-olds, they're scrolling. If you are not regulating and, you know, really guiding them through it. Uh, I was at I visited a family one time. Sometimes I do like surprise visits to fans and families and I got to visit a little one. He was so tiny. He was three. But he was showing me that he loves my Good Morning Train song. And so he's playing the song over and over. And then he got when he got tired, he started scrolling and I was like, "Oh, he scrolls. Go. " But right there, I saw a teachable moment where a parent could step in. You can step in, you know, stop the scrolling and talk about what happened. Um, and then maybe transition to something else. Maybe transition to the train toys he has or transition to something that is similar to what we were talking about or a book about trains, right? That's what helps. Now, of course, naturally, sometimes you have to just, you know, parents have to let the children just have, right? Whatever. We I get it. But when you can Yeah. Co. — Co. Okay. I love that. Um, are you do you have a favorite part of your work? — That's so hard. I was — a favorite, not the favorite. — I know. I was just talking to a friend of mine and I'm like, I love everything. I want to create everything. I have so many ideas and just being here in this space, I'm getting so many ideas. — I think what — from the watching the talks and — listening to the speakers and listening and seeing some of the work they're doing because some of the videos they're showing and the work they're doing and then just walking around and creating with the Lego pieces. I mean, I'm just like focused. I was so focused on creating my initial and I finally got it, but and then I lost it somewhere along the way. I lost it, — but it's okay. But it was it just felt so good and I love that part, the play. So, for me, I think my favorite part is connecting with children, really being hands-on, whether it's through the screen and doing private lessons or whether it's doing events and experiences in person. — Yeah. Just being there with the children. — Yeah. Well, does and so play is obviously an essential part of your work. It's a how you teach. It's a way uh you believe that it's a part of how people can learn. Um does it sneak its way into other parts of your life? — It does. I wish it did more, but I am I'm actually determined to allow it to sneak it sneak its way into my life a little bit more. — We you know, we've been hearing that from a lot of people today. I think that's a challenge for all of us to find more ways to incorporate play into our lives. — So true. We have to. It is so important. — But is there a way do you have a something that makes you feel playful? I mean it could be your work or — of course my work in creating the activities that we're going to do because I usually have to create them first. So I have a private kindergarten class. I teach it as virtually but we were working on the STEM project. For eight weeks we were building different projects but projects that I showed them. So let's build this together. How do we do it? And then the last two weeks it's been their designs. they're sitting down and designing and putting it together. And so what was so fun is that on Wednesday we built two of their projects in class and that was so much fun. So that was fun because I get to play and figure out these projects before — Yeah. — before I get into the classroom. So that's fun. And then I love to collage. That's play for me. — Collage. — Wait, can you talk us through the collage a little? — I do. Okay. So as a little girl, I used to always collage magazines because I grew up in the 80s. So magazines galore. I used to cut out pictures of magazines of just anything. It could be because I love the color of purple and I just cut out different things purple and make post I would make poster boards, put them around my room. — Yes. — And so now I don't do the poster boards because my husband would be like, "What is this? What is this? " So now I have — Yeah. — But I have a gigantic collage book. It's huge. It's like a art book. I went to a art store to get it. — Gosh. — And then I just The pages are empty. So I guess the collage when I get I go buy a whole bunch of magazines when I get in the mood. And that's fun for me. That's a Sunday afternoon fun. — I don't do it enough. Yeah. Is it? And then you're looking for that kind of flow state. — It's a flow. It's like whatever's on my mind. It could be I want to travel more. It could be I'm just feeling the color pink this season. I'm going to find everything pink. Anything. — Yeah, that's — I want to get back into collaging. It does feel like something like from childhood. — And stickers. Do you like stickers? — I love stickers. — Yes. Why did I think we were — I don't know how to I feel like I've forgotten how to use stickers. I don't know. — Collage with stickers, too. in the collage. — Yeah. For me, cuz I'm not I mean, I know a lot of people journal and they'll use it that way. Yes. Or they plan planners. I'm not a planner. Yeah. But — Yeah. That doesn't — I'm not a planner girl, right? Yeah. I love planners, but I'm not a planner. I just want it for the stickers, — but I just put them in my collages. — Yeah. Okay. — So, yeah. — Amazing. — Yeah. I love stickers. — Um Well, so and do you have videos on everything from letters, colors, morning routines. That's my fave. Um, do you have uh a favorite video or a favorite song or — That is hard. — I know. — Okay. If my husband was here, he would tell you every song's her favorite song. She says that. — Good for you. — I of course the Good Morning Train is always going to be a hit because that is something I used to literally sing in the classroom with students. Uh, and then I would probably say they're all my favorite. Maybe Little Star. Little Star because it's my my take on Twinkle. That's beautiful. Oh my gosh. Well, it's good that you love what you do. — I think that's probably helpful. — I do. — Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Monica, for joining us here in the studio. Such a pleasure. Well, let's see. Next up, — oh, you know what? I'm actually gonna ask Alex to come back up and join me. Okay. — Yeah, sounds good. And we'll see you. Yeah. — See you all soon. — Take care. Alex, get back in here. — Hello. — How are you doing? — I'm doing great. I have to tell you, I was admiring your Lego work. — Oh, thank you. — And everyone's spelling work. Um, — impressive spelling work. — Yes. Really work. Yeah. — I forgot how fun spelling is. — Yeah, they don't teach you that in school. — They teach you the spelling, but not the fun part. — It's so wacky. English is so wacky. — I know. — Okay. Wait. So, I have it on good authority that you have an adorable baby. And the authority was your baby because I was cuddling her the other night and she was the sweetest little person. — She is. — Um, so I want to talk So, so — and you have an adorable little baby who I still think of as a baby even though she's — baby almost sixyear-old always be my baby. I want to talk about what play looks like in your life. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. Um, well, my little baby is five months old, so she is — such big cheeks. — Yeah, she does. Oh my gosh, she's um not watching, but love you, babe. Um, we just actually last night I got her this. She's teething, so I got her one of these little like rubber teething balls, and she was getting like really frustrated by it. Like she really wanted to get in there, but it wasn't doing anything for her. And so then I got down on her level and I put the other end in my mouth and we were kind of doing this like tugof-war thing that was like kind of like two dogs. This doesn't sound like fun. It was She laughed. — We have a teething toy right over here. Should — we do it? — I don't think so. — Um but no, she laughed for the first time. — The first time ever? — I have very distinct mo memories of my daughter laughing for the first time. You did it. — She did. It was just playing this very silly. — That's the specialist moment. — And I have to tell you, her laugh, it's not like a cute little like baby giggle. It's like this. — That's what Jenny's first laugh was like, too. I was like crouching down behind a box and I had a little toy bunny and I was like going back and forth like that. — And she just got the laugh and I was like, "Okay. " Yes. — She's like this guy. — And like it was basically the high that I chase every time that I play with her. But yeah, it was like this chord. It wasn't just like — and that's how you know you really got them. Yeah. I mean, I guess the lesson is there. It was about getting down on the same level a little bit. — Yeah. I actually wear out the the uh the knees of every pair of jeans I have. — That's beautiful. — Yeah. Unless you — keep them all your jeans with — Yeah. Exactly. as a record of like the play that we do together. Yeah. No, I think that getting down on the level is a thing to do. down a level and also like making sure you're having fun which I feel like came up again and again today. It's like you know there there's this pressure to create fun for children when we're talking about learning and being with kids but also like find ways for to have fun yourself and that like in informs the — Yeah, I'm sure feed off of each other's energy of having a great time. It's also just like — such an exercise in improvisation, especially the older they get of like just like, okay, first of all, I need to make a game out of the random supplies that I have around what are we going to do? But then also just like the yes anding and like teaching the child to yesand. — Yes, the yesanding. — No, buts. — No, no butts. Um, yeah, I have like the most like imaginative play focused child ever. We have a a magnetile castle in the living room next to a Duplo brick castle over here. — And — are they friends or enemies? — No, they're enemies, of course. Um, and so I have to be the evil princesses who are trying to overthrow and infiltrate the Magnetile Castle. It's basically like a episodic show that we have going on. One of the guys, they're like, I'm a musician coming to play at your castle. They come in and then like they get unmasked and they get they got tossed back over. — Yeah. Okay. We haven't gotten there yet with uh my daughter, but I cannot wait. — Yeah. Did you have like games that were special to you as a child? — Yeah. I mean, we played a lot of like I love the schoolyard games. They were so silly. Like I remember my friends and I my class got lost in this game for like I want to say a month where we were just collecting acorns and hiding them. So like I guess we were playing squirrel. I don't know. — We were hiding them in different places and we thought it was like very cool like edgy like I've got this stash of acorns under this trash can in the schoolyard. — Yeah. — But yeah, I love those like big group games that you would come up to with together. And Yeah. like a forest that's grown — from that game. — No, no. Uh, no. Actually, I remember the day that the janitor uh moved the trash can and found all our acorn. — Oh, no. Like, we got to clean this up. — Oh, was that a tragic? — Yeah. No, we moved on. I think to Beanie Babies, I want to say it was the 90s. — That was a time. Pogs. Do you remember Pogs? — Oh, yes. — Yeah. — I never understood. — I never played Pogs. I just collected. I had a giant tube full of them. — Cool. — Yeah. I Well, okay. I guess I remember that from my childhood. — Yeah. — But I have like so little memories of my childhood. — Yeah. — But um Okay. But here So here's another game that Jenny and I play. — Um so we will make escape rooms for each other in our basement. — Amazing. — Um we usually work together and we make it for my wife Bethany. Um and we take turns, but like it's just like sort of a design project where we come up with the theme and the puzzles together. A lot of construction — people live in your house. — Yeah. Well, you won't be able to escape it. I mean, okay. No, you're very smart. You You're very Yeah, but you'll be surprised when — when I get stuck. — It's like a good locked in the basement experience. — Cool. — Yeah. — Yeah. So, that's a fun. I highly recommend that one. Um Yeah. Just anything. We also um we watched uh I introduced her to Legends of the Hidden Temple. — Um great show. — Yeah. Still holds up. First of all, somebody should make if you're out there and you're thinking about a show to make, probably Legends of the Hidden Temple. Um, but then we had to make our own episode. And um, and so like we designed it all. We made teams and it just became like this great like imaginative play plus art object. — Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, okay. And Alex is a game designer. So, um, and has designed many games for TED on ted. com/games. — Yeah. Do you want to play a game? — Okay. Let's play the let's play the purring test. — Okay. — Um this was our first game. — So the premise of the purring test, it's really a game about teaching about AI, like teaching people to recognize it and also trying to get in the head of AI. Like because of its blackbox nature, trying to wrap your head around like what is it? It's not thinking, but like why is it making the decision? And like it's about how weird AI is. It's not about like how like wow look at these amazing things. It's like — like reconciling with the weirdness of it. So, it's like a guessing game — where — I love a guessing game. — Um, you So, you're going to get a series of clues. So, in this one, the answer is a thing. — Okay. — Um, and so there are three clues that we can draw from. Um, the first is write a riddle about this thing. Draw this thing as a cat. Everything level has a cat. And create a jewelry collection inspired by this thing. Go. What would you like to see? — Well, I think we have to start with a cat. — Okay. Let's start with a cat, please. — I'm gonna do it. — Okay. — I have a guess. I haven't played this level. — Oh, wait. I might — You want to guess? — An emoji. — I think so. That's That was my guess as well. — Hey. Okay. That's so They're increasing order of difficulty. And please play along with us in the comments. — Can I just read this? — Oh, yeah. The riddle. — I'm not a word yet. I help you say how you feel in a fun little way. Smiling or crying, I show it with cheer. What am I? — An emoji. — An emoji, doesn't it? I wanted it to arrive. Yeah. — Thank you, Alex. — Okay. You want to see? Okay. Next level. — Well, I think we might. The folks in the theater might be heading back. I guess they are. Yeah. We have to get ready to stage. I know. Once we disappear, we're just going to be sitting here playing games, y'all. — It's true. — Yeah. But, uh, yeah, the folks are heading back in now. So, the stage show is about to start. Um, and uh, but we're going to wrap up here for now, but we'll be back. So, don't go anywhere. — Yeah. We got interviews. We got more games. We have a special performance coming up. — We got live music. — Yeah. In the meantime, you get to watch some really beautiful talks. You're going to laugh. You're going to cry. You're going to think. Uh I know. — You're hopefully going to learn more about how to include play in your life. — Indeed. So, without further ado, back to you, Chris.

— Hello. Hello to everyone in the room. Hello to everyone on the live stream. This is session two. Play is a craft. And before we get started with this session, I want to just share a little bit more about our amazing TEDex community. TEDex is a global community of independently organized volunteer-run events that bring people together to share local ideas. Last year alone, the TEDex community hosted more than 4,000 events. and their TEDx play events are going to be kicking off next week in Indonesia, the UK, and Colombia, and will continue over the next year in places like Thailand, Ethiopia, Portugal, China, Australia, India, Brazil, and many more places all over the world. In our last session, we heard about our desperate need for play and how powerful it can be. And in this session, we're going to see some amazing manifestations of what can happen when people center play in their lives. And personally, I have already been really inspired. I loved seeing all of the doodles that you all did on the uh the mural and um seeing Doodle Boy's work. And I also wanted to just highlight um particularly how talented he is and how talented all of you are by contrasting your incredible doodles with um some doodles that I have been doing um over the past several years in my journal. I journal every morning and I um occasionally will uh draw a self-portrait with my eyes closed. Um, so here's an example of how I look to myself with my eyes closed. And then here's how I look to myself on my birthday. with my eyes closed as a dog for some reason. Unless you think like, "Oh, that's not a great drawing, Chris, because you're doodling with your eyes closed. " Let me just show you my eyes open. Me trying my hardest. Okay. Still absolutely terrible. And even in my dream world, I still look exhausted and disheveled. So there you go. Um, you are very, very talented. You are all extremely talented and it is what a delight it is to get to play with you all today. Now, speaking of talent, our next speaker is a star of the stage. She is a lead actor on the British equivalent of Broadway. What I'm trying to say is this is a theater luminary and she is only 11 years old. Please welcome Suki Hillier. Hi everyone. Today I want to talk about imagination and theater. For the past year I've been playing Matilda at the Cambridge Theater in London's West End. The theater has 1,249 seats and it is almost full every single night. Matilda is based on the book by Rald Doll and a lot of you probably already know the story. It is about a brave little girl who even though she is bullied by her parents, uses her intelligence, courage, and magic to take control of her own life. Well, I am that Matilda alongside three other amazing girls. The four of us share the lead role, which is wonderful. But getting here was not exactly simple. I had to go through six rounds of auditions twice. The first time was in spring 2024. I made it all the way to the final round, but then got a really bad cold. I couldn't sing. I couldn't perform. So, I had to stop. Six months later, I had to go through the whole process all over again. And then came the hardest part, the waiting four whole weeks of not knowing. It felt like four years. But then finally, one day, the call came. I had been offered the role. I didn't know what to laugh or cry. So, I did both at the same time. Here's something I should tell you though. Matilda and I go way back, long before auditions, long before any of this. I started watching the 1996 Matilda film when I was just three years old. I watched it over and over again. I would sit very still, staring at objects around the house and trying to make them wobble. So, when I finally got to step onto the real stage of the Cambridge Theater, I couldn't things with my eyes. Well, after seven years of staring at cups, three months of intensive rehearsals followed. every step, every line, every move again and again until I didn't have to think about it anymore. The cast and coaches were all so patient with me. Honestly, they deserved medals. But somewhere in all those hours, something had changed. I'd stopped trying to find Matilda because I realized she'd been inside me the whole time. She was the girl I've been dreaming about since I was three. I didn't become her. I just finally let her out. The theater itself is a world of its own. It has lights, painted walls, window frames, desks, and swings. And there is a library where I can dive into my books and find the wonderful Mrs. Phelps waiting for me. There is my very kind Honey. And over there, sitting in front of the telly with my brother are my rather obnoxious parents. And somewhere lurking into the shadows is a terrifying Miss Trunch Bowl. Every night before the show starts, I stand backstage getting ready. In my mind, I think about Milda's life. Her love of books, her hatred of bullies, her courage to find her own way to fight back. I breathe in, I breathe out, and then I step onto the stage. And when I'm in the light, I am her. I'm brave enough to stand up to Miss Trunch Bull. When she grabs boy by his ears, I shout her with everything I have. My heart beats so fast, I can feel it. When my dad writes my books, I know I'm resilient and that I will get my own back. Glue his hat to his head. Dyier's hair green. Every time I have a hidden smile right here. I love standing on elevating bookstand during quiet. Everything's so still, so quiet. But my heart is pounding as I feel all Matilda's anger bursting out through my eyes. But things in life do not always go as planned. And the same is true on stage. One night during the scene where I hug Miss Honey because she'd offered me something no one else ever has. Kindness. I hug her very tightly. At that exact moment, Miss Trunchable ran in. We were supposed to spring apart. Except we couldn't because my hair was completely tangled into a necklace. 1 second, 2 seconds, 5 seconds of stage time feels rather long, let me tell you. But nobody panicked. We stayed calm. We stayed in the scene quietly. Very quietly, we untangled ourselves. I lost some hair and Miss Honey lost a necklace, but we carried on. The audience never noticed a thing. And most luckily, Miss Trunch wouldn't catch us either. You see, the stage and life are not so different. Because imagination isn't about escaping the real world. It is a way of building one. And when our imaginations work together, every character on that stage comes alive. the cast, the crew, and every single person in the audience all join in. That is when the real magic happens. I look out and see your shining faces back at me. I can see smiles. I can see tears. I hear you clapping so hard, as if you'd never want to leave Matilda's world. And honestly, neither do I. But at that moment, I want to give every single one of you the biggest hug and tell you Matilda loves you all. Thank you. Keep it going for Suki. So incredible. I I'm truly I don't know have anything to say other than how incredible she is. Um I am so excited for what we have coming up right next. Um, our next speaker is one of, in my opinion, the most exciting and talented designers in the entire world. He has elevated footwear to an art form. He's created iconic designs for everyone from Versace to Crocs, Puma, New Balance, and more. He's an industrial designer and a fine artist. And he is joining us for a live conversation on stage with Khloe Shasha Brooks, TED curator. Please welcome Cele. Thank you so much for joining us. — Thanks for having me. — So among many of your popular designs, you made Crocs cool and um this is called the Crocs Pock Clog based on your own fingerprint mold. And what I love is that Crocs reach out to you asking if they could send you some shoes and you said how about we actually collaborate instead and they said yes. So once they said yes, how did you decide to do this specifically? — Uh so it was a great honor because uh they first wanted to collaborate and then when I sent them uh what I didn't know was a kids croc shoe. They let me know that they loved that I was thinking of the form of the croc which a lot of collaborators in the past were simply reskinning the croc maybe adding jibbits and I was thinking of the form and that comes from my industrial design background. So once they saw that I was interested in manipulating the form, they asked me if I wanted to be the first uh collaborative designer to create a croc from scratch, which I immediately did a Birdman hand rub and said yes. Um and so this is the result of that. And so initially I had to make sure that I fostered and maintained the existing elements of the Croc DNA and made sure that I didn't scare away the existing consumer. And you know, getting the honor of working with a brand like Crocs, you get to work with their heritage and their DNA. So, I had to make sure to maintain that and then also introduce um my own brand identity, put it through a new lens, and uh potentially speak to a new audience. — Um you know, it's pretty amazing because you've had a really amazing journey as a footwear designer. You started at Payless in 2009 and then you started doing collaborations with a lot of brands like New Balance, uh Klehan, Versace to name a few. And now you run your own brand called Sponge. That's what those are. So to help paint the picture of how you've forged your own path, I'd love for you to share the story that I just love of you being on your couch eating cereal in a moment of unemployment and you somehow went from scrolling on LinkedIn to convincing Versace to give you your dream job. Will you tell us that story? — Yeah. So uh cereal on my couch that is a description of the image of unemployment that I was experiencing at that time. Um, I was using all of the tools that have been given to us for outreach, uh, LinkedIn, Craigslist, maybe it was even Facebook at the time and sending messages to whoever would accept them. I reached out to a Versace design director and I proposed an opportunity. I said, "The sneaker industry is a multi-billion dollar business, and traditionally that consumer isn't paying attention to fashion brands. They're traditionally paying attention to the sneaker brands that we're all used to and probably wearing right now. " Um, but then there was this mass education that happened that um, Raph, Simmons, Adidas, Nike, Koma Garson, and now this massive consumer was aware of the fact that fashion houses can make sneakers. And so I reached out to them. A few days later, Donatella herself responded, said she loved my ideas. She uh, perfect timing for that photo. Um, she uh, said that she wanted me to come out Milan to Milan and present to her of what I thought the sneaker program could be. Um I went out to Milan a few days later um presented a combination of merchandising and design and sales insight and she loved it and she was like I want to hire you. I want you to move to Milan right away. Do you want to consult? She was really open about what the opportunity could be. Um because she was so open. I asked if I could have my own design studio in Los Angeles and uh travel to Milan monthly for factory visits and shows and whatnot and she said yes. So I went outside and did my pursuit of happiness cry in the streets um because my life changed instantly. But really what that was more about was the power of asking and what that can bring you. — Yeah. — So throughout your career you've had um you you've always used color and form and function in a way that's felt really playful. And um there's so many nuance details in your designs. like there's so many Easter eggs that people could find if they know what to look for. Um, so I'm going to show some pictures of your shoes and I'd love to just hear you share your design philosophy for each of them. So — tell us about these. — Uh, so this was my first ever collaboration with a Chinese brand called Ant. Um, this was a from scratch collaboration. A lot of collaborations these days are colorups and skinnings, but this was a white the I guess the result of a white piece of paper. Um, and I guess what I was trying to accomplish here was um, an introduction to the footwear and the footwear industry and the audience because before that I was working at different brands and this was the first time that a footwear a piece of footwear is going to feature my name. So there was a lot of things that I had to introduce uh, to my existing audience. — How about this one? — Uh, this is the Halley 1. It's the first signature sneaker of Tyrese Hallebertton. Um, I became a forward designer because of basketball. That was my kind of uh initial inspiration that made me feel the emotions that I believe I'm giving to others now. Um it is with Puma. Um he recently wore it in the previous NBA finals. Um it was had a pretty tragic ending, but it was still um amazing to be a part of that shoe and to for it to fall at that part of my career was really special. — I love these. — Uh this was a shoe I did with Pierre Moss, which is a high fashion brand. Um the creative director reached out to me and he asked me to create a shoe that looked like or that represented the feeling of being financially stuck. Um I knew that I couldn't use concrete. So then I quickly thought of using uh silicone as the solution and that's what I made. — And that was in a runway show, right? — Yes. This was in like a SW16 runway show I think or SS. — How about these? — Uh this was uh these are a bunch of images from my Monontlair Genius collaboration. This was my first ready toear collection. And um as of late, a lot of my work has been described as like world building and this was that in real form because I got to create a full installation that helped further tell the story of um the ready toear collection and featured footwear accessories and um there were some pretty big billboards as well which I hadn't experienced thus far in my career. — And when you did this ready to wear collection, how did you go from just doing footwear to clothing? Like how did you think about that? I think one of the most difficult things for um an independent designer is creating your signature language. Like what is your you know what is that signature identity that someone can um recognize without even seeing a logo. So once I kind of establish that I think um it now makes it easy to bring that across um different categories of product. — And then this video — is just so charming. — That is Thundercat. That's Stephen. Um that was for a New Balance project called Sand Be the Time. Um a lot of the projects are influenced by experience experiences. So this was uh from a trip where was that? That was the pink sand dunes in Utah and that basically was the foundation of the story for that shoe. So uh the average person looking at that shoe might see a pink shoe but then with the story of the pink sand dunes and you know relating the execution of the chenille in to the colors of the sunset. Now you've cultivated a community. You've invited people to come into your world and you've told a story. — That's so cool. So, staying on that New Balance theme, um you deser designed the New Balance 574 yurt shoe with a whistle on the heel. — Yes. — So, most designers would never think of that. So, I'm going to share this with all of you so you can see what I'm talking about. Oh. — Oh, sorry. Never mind. That is a different question. I will get to that in a moment. when you moved to Los Angeles, you got really into hiking in nature and um this is still about New Balance. So, you started designing outdoor shoes and gear and in one instance you translated Arizona's Antelopee Canyon, which are photos from these are photos from that canyon into a shoe called Peace Be the Journey, which came out in 2020. And that shoe, even though it came out six years ago, is still so popular that it's being sold on markup uh for markup on resale sites like eBay, like to this day consistently for a lot of money. So tell us why you think this shoe is still so popular. — Um potentially that I told a story that people could resonate with. This was influenced by a trip to Antelope Canyon. Um a beautiful place for those that haven't been. And ultimately the goal was to make this shoe represent that experience. So, if you're looking at that shoe, it's an orange shoe. But then when I tie the orange to the tones of Antelope Canyon and the blue of the inn represents the sky and the maroons represent the tones in the sunset. Um, and then the campaign um tells that story further. Now, when people wear that shoe, sure it may be a shoe that they think looks cool, but then they now feel like they're a part of a community. I remember when I was when I first started traveling to China for work, I'd uh would always look for people wearing Supreme because I assumed that there was a higher likelihood that they spoke English. So sometimes there are visual cues that uh signify community. — Yeah, that's a great example. Um okay, now the Euro. So this is another New Balance shoe and with a whistle on the heel and uh let's see it in action for a second. So, how did you think of that? — Um, so New Balance tasked me with the opportunity of creating a shoe from scratch. Um, around this time my buddy Samuel Ross, who's a designer based out of London, he had this Nike shoe called the Zoom Vomero and it featured a molded plastic piece on the back of the shoe. And I'd wear them a lot and people would always ask me, "What does that molded piece do? " And I would respond, "Nothing at all. " And people seem to still accept it. And I found that really fascinating because it was a very unused area of real estate of the shoe. And so I thought to myself, what if this area of real estate could be used for something functional? Um, obviously if that functional thing was filled with like technology, now you're looking at like a $2,000 shoe. So that wasn't an option. So then I thought of how I could man manipulate plastic to function. That became a whistle. Um, truthfully, I created the whistle without thinking of the why, the purpose. I just thought a whistle was cool. Um, and then, uh, for the prototype, I glued a whistle into a New Balance shoe and I met with the team and I told them a whole story of, uh, think about camping with your friends and it's almost dusk and you stop to take a picture of some deer and your friends walk ahead and now you've lost them. You can just And then I grabbed a shoe from beneath the table, blew the whistle, and then they all slope up. Um, and so again, that was, you know, maybe a little bit of my industrial design background, you know, trying to figure out how to find utility within maybe something that doesn't have as much. But then more importantly, um, I think it's kind of cool to just do something first in footwear. There's never been a whistle on a shoe. And if you were to think about, you know, how much energy it would take for you to scream if you like broke your ankle on a hike alone, uh, compared to the amount of energy it would just simply take you to blow a whistle. So, you know, giving the consumer a tool seemed like a good opportunity. — You know, one thing I've heard you say before is that um genius can be created in seconds and crap can be created over months. — Yeah. — Um I think that's such a great line. And um — that's why you never charge hourly. — That is so true. — So, no anyone who hires consultants. But uh so, how does someone optimize their life so that they can avoid creating crap over long amounts of time? Um maybe avoid distraction. I've always found out that I've always found that um when trying to create not getting too distracted by the thing that we all have in our pockets right now and constantly scrolling other people's ideas. Um social media, the internet, Instagram, it's a great sense of inspiration, but that it can also create a massive cloud of distraction that helps you or makes you lose sight of your own vision. And so I think finding that balance between the work and you avoiding distraction is important. — Yeah. Um, you know, one thing that you're known for beyond your shoes is, you know, speaking about those Easter egg details in your work is the boxes that you actually design for the shoes, the shoe boxes. And so any sneaker head I've spoken to is like, "Oh, slay these boxes. " Like I love collecting his shoes because they stack so beautifully. So, like how much time do you spend thinking about how the shoe will look on the foot versus in the box? — Well, I just think I often go back to um you know, I'm pretty experienced in footwear design, but I have like my masters in footwear consumerism. So, I just think of those moments that uh resonated with me and that made me feel cool or more athletic or magical. And so, I'm really just trying to recreate those moments. I really think it's important to take advantage of every area of real estate of a product because as creatives all we have is that reveal moment right so when we reveal that product how does it make the audience feel do they like it immediately do they not like it immediately and then they see it over and over again and then they start to like it I love that relationship with product because it's almost like Steve Jobsian if that's the term um because you know he said the consumer doesn't want know what they want until you show it to them so the Crocs Plex being an example, like there were a lot of people that shoe upset at first and then slowly seeing them come around to both that product specifically or even the brand of Crocs was really cool to witness because you almost were like changing minds with product. — So, this passion of yours runs deep. You um when you were 9 years old, you made this Air Jordan 11 out of clay. And I would love to know, do you still feel like you're the nine-year-old version of yourself when you do your work today? — Absolutely. I mean, if you love what you do, it's not a job. This is pretty much what I want I've wanted to do my entire life. So, um, there's a certain level of freedom. nostalgia that exists within my work. Um, not to quote Kanye West, but you know, he in one interview he was saying that he felt like he was creating most freely when three years old. And that was a time in our lives where we didn't have many boundaries or restrictions and we just kind of did, you know, our creative output was exactly how we wanted it to be. And now we potentially have employers or um market rules or trends that we need to follow. And then those are all ultimately like guardrails that prevent true creative freedom. So um everything's about balance at the end of the day day, but I still try to maintain that freedom as much as possible. — Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me here. All righty, mates. Welcome back to my channel. Today, we'll be doing a tutorial on how to make a PB& J. First, you got to grab that jam. And oh, no, there's none left. All right. Well, let's try the peanut butter. Oh, yeah, there is some left. All right, put those aside. Grab the plate. Got to thread the jam. Then you got to grab your bread. So good. And I dropped it. I dropped it. We've got to put the bread on the plate. Grab your spatula and scoop scoop. Then you got to put your PB& J back and well grab the sauce. Put the sauce on and um well make it. Eat it. Try it. Put in the fridge. I know. It grew. Like catch it, catch it. And I got you, you little stinker. Bite it. And that was not good. Thanks for watching though. Kitchen. — That was Jim and the Bread created by Nivea, Lyanna, and Nimar of FC Academy, a student film making program based in Massachusetts. Okay, next up we have a musical performance which I am telling you is going to knock your socks off. She is a high school student and a professional accordion player. She travels the world performing her music and she is the co-founder and co-organizer of the Accordion Star International Competition which brings together hundreds of participants and jury members from over 30 countries. Please put your hands together for Maria Tlesha. Heat. Thank you so much and hello everyone. I am 18 years old and I am from Eugene, Oregon. I have been playing the accordion for about 12 years and it is such a pleasure to be here and to share the beauty and versatility of my instrument with all of you. Recently, I had the privilege of performing for NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts. Thank you. And there I performed the piece that I have just played for you called The Prelude and Fug by one of my favorite classical composers, Yokan Sebastian Bach. Now, I love playing music in many different styles from Buck to Beatles to AC/DC, especially in a duet with my father. He is my teacher and a professional accordion player himself. Now, before I play my final piece for you, I'd like to briefly familiarize you with this instrument. So this is a professional model of a B system chromatic button accordion which has 120 buttons on the left side and only 106 on the right side. Not that many. There are also registers over here which I use to change the tone of the sound. So I can imitate other instruments such as the bassoon, the piccolo, the organ and so on. And they are also duplicated up here. And these are called chin switches which as you can guess I can operate using my chin like this. And additionally this middle part here which I constantly push and pull is called the bellows. And the bellows act as the lungs of the accordion since they pump air in and out and control the dynamics. Now, considering this instrument weighs about 35 pounds, I would say it's a bit of a workout as well as an intense brain exercise to handle. And you may be wondering why I chose to play such a unique instrument. Well, when I was little, we actually had this tiny little accordion in our living room. And one day, I just came up to my dad and said, "Hey, can you teach me how to play this? " So, I started off by learning a few chords and simple melodies and I just fell in love with the instrument. Uh, even though the first ever accordion I played didn't even have all the notes. So, I would say that having a teacher at home living with me also helped me progress pretty quickly which has brought me to where I am today. And now I would like to play for you Moments Music by composer France Schubert. Another big round of applause for Maria. Oh. Um, if you want to find more of Maria's music, and I know that you will, um, I'm certainly so excited to hear more. You can find more on her YouTube channel. Um, I really recommend checking that out. I can also just say, um, Maria has been like warming up quietly on the accordion backstage. And it is going to be such a profound disappointment for me tomorrow to not have like quiet, soothing accordion music in my life all day. Our next speaker studied urban planning at MIT. He then found so many inspiring ways to bring those planning decisions out of the ivory tower and into regular people's lives. He is the co-author of the book Dream, Play, Build: Hands-On Engagement for Enduring Spaces and Places. And he has facilitated more than 2,000 workshops across the United States. He has We're doing great. Everything's good. You know, play everything at any moment something surprising could happen. That's the beauty. Um he has uh facilitated more than 2,000 workshops across the United States helping residents shape conversations about public space, climate, transportation, and civic life. Please give a big round of applause to James Roas. Hi, I'm James and today we're going to learn about how to build your idol city to play. I wanted a dollhouse growing up, but in those days boys didn't play with dolls and my parents couldn't afford to buy me building blocks. So, I started collecting small policy gave me a shoe box and they built my first mini house. I was so motivated by it that I kept on building streets, neighborhoods, and eventually cities. So that led me to careering city planning. But over the years as a city planner, I realized that we take our work way too seriously. We use the city as a deadline, as a measurement, as data, or a problem to be solved by a really fancy presentation. And we use words people don't understand, maps people can't read, you know, numbers that confuse people, and surveys that people don't fill out. And community meetings are dreaded both by the planner that has to facilitate them and the public who has to attend them. It's either an empty room where nobody cares about the issue or the combat zone where a few people with a few aggressive people with very strong opinions will dominate the conversation and everybody else stays silent. But like most people hate public speaking and myself I comm I communicate better with my hands. So I thought and for a lot of community members the city is a place of memories and sensory experiences. So planners have very few to few tools to capture these kind of intangible qualities. So for planners we know we get the land use right but they feeling wrong. We could we could design streets for cars but not for humans and we all it's like to walk down the street like this. So, so I thought what if we designed cities like we did as children through play or at least how I did because as children our brain's command center or preoponal cortex is not fully developed. So, we use our senses and imagination to explore the world and we played and we and we shared without any kind of a agenda. So, I went back to my childhood and developed playset where people use objects to build their urban planning solutions. I introduced this approach to planners at that time and a lot of them were hesitant because it wasn't based on a measurement or data and plus they were worried that people would build things that the city couldn't deliver on such as a launching pad to the moon and uh but instead of inventing this idea I took a different path with friends I opened up an art gallery where I could put my method into practice. I would lay out thousands of small recycling objects on a table and have people just build their ideal city from them and it was a hit. People were creative and they were social and they would stay for five minutes or few hours and they were h I saw happy people that I would not see at community meetings. So after facilitating hundreds of hands-on art installations, I co-wrote a book to understand why this process worked. And how many of you here, how many you are under the age of 26? Raise your hands. Well, your brains aren't fully formed yet. So, so you have capacity to think big and think creatively. After 26, your prefer cortex is formed. And now you worry more you worry more about survival and that. So, uh so it's so it's hard for so people would think more about parking than their imagination. So uh so so through play you know we can think about you know how we use our brain that we can figure out survival mode and think about the city as an imagination and with creativity. So eventually city planners took notice of them again in braceman method my city workshops or playdates are accessible to people of all ages background and languages and they go with a very simple prompt. Build your favorite child memory in five minutes using objects. Don't talk about it, build it. Because once you build that memory again, it becomes real and it become and it inspires you to build inspire you to build cities of the future cities of the future. As people start to the objects, they let go of anical thinking to enter a creative flow state. It's like art therapy. They start thinking differently. The colors and the shapes of the objects remind people of activities and places that they love. For example, hair rollers will remind African-American women the importance of doing hair with their elders, while an orange maple leaf will remind people from New England about fall, you know. So, so every everybody builds and everybody shares their memory. And these stories vary from attending uh attending summer camp, creating makebelieve games, you know, hanging out with friends, or learning how to ride a bike. And every after everybody shared a story, I asked what were some of these me what do some of these memories have in common? Most of them are social with family and friends. They're also multiensory and often take place outdoors in nature. Children are physically active. They never build passive activities like watching TV or in screen time, you know, and no one builds ownership or wealth and having a lot of toys. And most importantly, no one ever builds getting to school on time. So, so people and people then realized at that moment that across ages, income, race and geography, they have more in common than they thought. So, suddenly the room transforms from a place of individual opinions into one of listening, empathy, and shared values. So, so before we, so we before we start to plan or lay out the brick and mortar, we have to begin our meetings with this with these feelings of belonging. So, now people are ready to play and plan. So we ask people to work in teams to create their ideal community in 10 minutes. Use the same objects or more. So and so uh so they can collaborate, negotiate and compromise. So their ideas begin to intersect with each other as they place objects on the table and they move them around and they imagine landscapes. Individual ideas become collective with the help of others and new possibilities emerge. And uh this is and this would be difficult to do through words, languages or maps. So so once time is up all the teams share their values share their visions. And from the hundred hundreds of visions I've witnessed over the years, no matter who they are, people want the same kind of city. They want a city of relationships with nature and other people. So to illustrate this, the teams build walkable and bikable community that are focused on family and friends. They build public spaces, plazas, and public transportation and gardens that dominate the city centers, not skyscrapers. And like the childhood memories, these they're multi-ensory places filled with parks, nature, trees, water, and range to physical activities. And they turn they turn freeways into gardens. The team the teams don't build transactional cities with office parks, freeways, parking lots. No one builds a giant house in the suburbs and the commute to work. Yeah. And no one builds gated communities or jails because they're pling from joy. That makes a big difference. So here are two of my favorite projects ver and load in Tijuana Mexico. most informal settlements in Tijuana like community vera were built very quickly and they lack basic infrastructure and especially public spaces. So I was invited to facilitate a grassroots community meeting to design a community center down there. It was a big success. We gave the city 10 pages of notes ideas from the community and committed a community center but they also got gas deceas which translates to house of ideas. It's an upgrade. It's an upgraded public space or library where people can read and give talks. The second project is the 50th street light rail station in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2008, the city of Phoenix helped fund the ability 360 center which is a state-of-the-art recreation center and community center that it's used daily by hundreds of people with disabilities. But and but across the street is a light rail station. But at that light rail line, but at that time the closest station were a mile apart in either direction and under end of the hot Phoenix sun a mile walk with person with disabilities can be life-threatening. So we did a workshop where had individuals build their ideal station based on their disability would work for them. So after they did that they worked in teams and create and merge their ideas to create their ultimate you know rail station designs. So this these solutions they created kind of fit their mo kind of helps solve their mobility challenges. So they became the advocates for this potential infill station. So for many years they made phone calls, wrote letters, sent emails to the mayor and the council person until till 2019 they finally got a station built which gives them a lot more independence to get to the center. Plus they saw their designs in the stations, you know, low, you know, painted crosswalks, low grade, low sidewalks, artwork, twinkly shade, and you know, landscape buffers to protect it from the street. So through place your planet becomes human again. People don't just describe it. They show it. They feel it and they own it. And that moment something shifts. They stop being passive participants and they start being active designer visionaries of their own communities. And this gives planners and the public a new way of shaping cities. Not just repeating what we already have but imagining something better. And sometimes the most powerful tool we have to do this is through play. Thank you. — One more time for James. — Um, okay. Inspired by James' ideas, I want you all just in your head right now to think of in the city or the town where you live, um, what is your favorite place? Just think of that for one second and then on the count of three I'm gonna have you say it out loud. Okay. Uh three, two, one, — Grand Central. — Okay. Um great. A lot. I heard a lot of parks. public spaces and then I also heard my own voice. Um, you know, one thing I want to say also is, um, this is such an incredible group of people that we have uh on stage and it is in addition to the incredible work that they do, they travel from all over the world to come here and to um learn these talks and to deliver them on stage and that is even though they're making it look easy, that is no easy feat. So, if you could just give them all another huge round of applause. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, we have uh one more speaker in this session and then there is the break and um during the break you can actually use some of the ideas that James was talking about in the build the change activation. So you can u do some of that there. Um our final speaker for this session is a founding faculty member at the NYU game center and he is the co-founder of Game Lab Studio. He has designed award-winning games on and off the computer from the smash hit Diner Dash to largecale public games exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Please give a big round of applause to Eric Zimmerman. Hello everybody. Um, I'm Eric and I'm a game designer and that means that I make video games, I make tabletop games. Um, I work with architect Natalie Potsy to do large scale museum installations and uh, I also write books about game design and I teach at the NYU Game Center at Tish School of the Arts where we think about games as an art form and also play as a deep form of literacy. Um, today I want to talk to you from my point of view as a game designer, um, about how to really make something that engages and grabs and hooks an audience, right? And how you can apply these ideas to whatever it is that you do. Um, and how do we do that? We play with rules, right? I'm gonna I'm going to talk about that and I'm I want to structure that in terms of a series of levels. Um, uh, so I'm sorry about the level thing, but you know, I am a game designer, so here we are. Um, so, uh, let's start at the beginning, right? Rules. Okay, what are rules? What do I mean by rules? Well, think about when you buy a board game. What are you actually buying? Well, you have like a, you know, maybe a pretty box. There are some cards and dice and little pieces, but what you're really buying is rules, right? Rules from one point of view is the essence of what a game is. rules tell you what to do each turn and how to win. If you're like playing the game and it's like, "Oh, we landed on a red space. What does that mean? " I don't know. You have to we have to clarify this ambiguity by referring to the rules, right? Um let me give you another example. Let's say you're playing baseball, right? And you say, "Okay, this tree here is second base. " Okay, so I'm playing I'm here on second base. Uh, and then while the next batter is up, I'm like, "Oh, maybe I can like hold on to this little twig like way over here and get as close as I can to third base, right? " And then I'm tagged out and I'm like, "Wait, wait a second. I'm on second base. You're not on second base. Second base is a tree. It's not the tree. It's the trunk of the tree. " Right? Okay. There's an argument here. And in order to actually play the game of baseball, we'd have to resolve this ambiguity, right? In order to move the game forward. So from this point of view, like games don't sound like that much fun, right? rules are like rigid and fixed and logical, right? But the amazing thing about games is that if you decide to enter into those rules, right? play, then what happens is play. And play is the opposite of rules, right? So if rules are logical and rigid and fixed and unchanging, play is spontaneous and creative and unexpected and it's so much the opposite of rules, right? But we need those rules in order to help facilitate that play. Which brings us to our next level. Play, right? Okay. Play is not something that just happens on its own. With play, we always play. We always play with something, right? Let me explain what I mean. Let's take like we can play with any system. Even this is a system just like walking, right? So here's walking. Let me demonstrate walking for you. Walking. I'm walking. Right? So that's like the logical sort of efficient transportation idea of walking, just getting from point A to point B. But if you imagine in your head a child walking playfully, something else is happening, right? What is happening? What are you imagining? Somebody shout it out. — Skipping. Okay. So let me I will demonstrate. Okay. Skipping. What's another one? — Wait. Running. — Wand Oh, wandering. Right. Okay. I'm gonna fall off stage here. Okay. Wait. So wandering. What's another one? — Hopping. Okay, you guys are really putting me to work up here. One more — crawling. — Oh, yeah. Great. All right. This is becoming like masochistic, I think. Okay. So, I All right. So, what is happening here? What what's going on? Well, I'm playing with the rules of walking, right? So, however we see a kid avoiding cracks or skipping or hopping, they're playing with well, they're certainly playing with space and time, right? This idea of walking as this efficient transportation. They're playing with their bodies. They're playing with gravity. They're playing with maybe with like the social etiquette of the sidewalk because they're getting in people's ways, right? Because they're doing things that are unexpected and inappropriate, right? But that's play. Um, and this is why, you know, play it's like a uh it's like a very collaborative parasite. It's like it grabs on to something, but instead of sucking the life out of it, it does the opposite. It just adds joy. And this is why play is creativity because if we wanted to invent new forms of walking, this is what we would do. We would look at those structures. What are the rules of walking? What are the leverage points where we can start playing around with those structures and how can we then start to sort of poke and prod in them to to play with those structures and maybe invent something completely new. All right, back to our levels. We're at our next level, design. All right. So, we looked at what rules are. We looked at how we can play with systems. And now I want to talk about how game designers actually create a game, how we build games out of constraints. And I actually need two volunteers from the audience for this. So, I have a couple of volunteers. Okay. One, I saw you two uh come on up. Okay. So, come on up on stage. Let's give a round of applause for our brave volunteers. All right. I'll have you two stand over here. Stand right over here. Okay. So, uh, what are your names? — Mila. — Mila and — Okay, we're getting you, Mike. So, uh, Mila, just take a step back here. Okay. I've been told exactly where to position you for, uh, for proper camera coverage. Um, so, um, okay, we're going to play a game. And this game may not work at first. So, you we'll just take it step by step. Okay. I'm going to give you some rules. Um, uh, Mila, we'll start with you. And uh what I want you two to do is just alternate saying a word. Okay? It can be any word. And the only rule is that you can't repeat a word that's already been said. — Okay? Go ahead. — Cheese. — Play. — Yellow. — Freedom. — Red. — Okay. That's a start. Maybe not really a fun game yet, but that's okay. That's not your fault. That's on me. I'm the game designer. Um Okay. I I'm going to add another rule. We're going to keep all of the rules that we had before. So, you're going to alternate saying words. You're not going to repeat a word that's already been said, but I want to add a restriction. I want to I like your cheese uh opening. That was a very uh interesting opening. We're going to restrict it just to food. So, things you eat or drink, ingredients, dishes, otherwise the same rules. Okay. — All right. Whenever you're ready, — go ahead. Uh, ketchup, — mustard, — pizza, — hot dogs. — Okay. — Oh, — what was that? — Water. Okay, I like that. Yes, water. A beverage. Of course, that may actually have been less interesting than our first version. That's okay. It's not on you. I'm responsible here. So, um, what what we're going to do is we're going to add, um, we're going to add one more rule. Okay. going to keep everything we had before. You two are going to alternate saying rules so you can't repeat a word that's been said before. We're going to stick to edibles, beverages, dishes, things that you can eat or drink. But when Mila says a word, the last letter of your word is going to be the first letter of your word, Eda. And vice versa, the last letter of word is going to be the first letter of Ma's word. Let's see how this goes. Okay. And — uh whenever you're ready, take a step for it. — Yes. Let's go. — Cake. Cake — Evian is a type of drink. Does that work? — Evian ends with an N. — Nutella. — Okay. Easy. — Uh, almonds. — Oh. Yes, — Shirley Temple. — OH, WOW. LET'S GIVE IT UP FOR OUR two volunteers. Amazing. I love it. Thanks. You're Yeah, you could take those off stage. Okay. Wow. That was amazing. All right. What? Here's what I want to point out. Something happened that third time around, right? When we were when we were adding rules, something happened in that final version of the game. It wasn't just that these two suddenly got much more focused and uh intensely like wanting to play the game well, but I also heard everybody starting to lean forward. I heard whisperings. I heard suggestions coming from the audience, some of which were taken, right? And we also started to see some amazing play with the rules, right? We sort of switched over to some brand names. We got some uh we sort of multi like Shirley Temple uh was an awesome closing move there. Um so um what game designers do is work with these constraints, right? These constraints focus and guide the play of players. Now it may seem when you're playing a video game that it's the opposite that it's like video game lets you go anywhere and do anything and be anyone. But actually from a designer's point of view, we work with constraints and those constraints guide and focus the creative activity. And you know it can be that too many constraints are a problem right I could have said oh let's also now make it only sevenletter words right and you probably would have thrown me off stage so yes so so finding that balance right finding the right amount of constraints to guide and move the move the game forward into that creative space of play that's game design and um when you see players just like we did here and all of you actually joining in not just playing in the system but starting to play with the system and kind of bend bending and breaking rules like audience suggestions for example that's when we know we've really got something cooking and percolating and we're in that amazing space of play. Okay, we are we have we've looked at rules and uh we looked at uh playing with systems and uh how to design with constraints and the boss level here is thinking about how to apply this to what you do, right? To your project or organization. Um because there's a methodology here, right? The methodology is um looking at and understanding the system. How does the system work? How is it structured? And then what are those leverage points for play? How can you start poking around and playing with a system maybe in ways that are unexpected and even inappropriate? Um, and then as you start building this experience, can you don't be afraid of constraints, right? Use those constraints to kind of guide and focus the behavior of your audiences. Um, I want to finish just with a few quick examples. Um, I was at a dinner party uh recently, like a big fancy dinner party, room full of interesting people like kind of like all of you here today. amazing group here and but I was only at a table with like a handful of them and I thought to myself, how can I actually interact with more people here and not be just with the same people all evening? Well, after the first course, I stole all the name uh tags at the table and I randomly put them around at different tables. Luckily, everyone played along, but that little bit of playful design made a huge experience uh huge difference on everyone's experience. Um uh another example, there's a a wonderful performance space not too far from here in Brooklyn, St. An's warehouse. And there's a wonderful example of playful architectural design there in the bathrooms. So that the bathrooms have these giant signs like men over here and women over here and like giant like taller than a person sign. And so you sort of you go in these grand entrances and then when you go in you realize, oh wait a second, they actually both connect to the same space inside, right? And so I love that. It's so unexpected. It's playing with our expectations, but it's also playing with um our the sort of notion of a gender binary, right? And that sort of social etiquette of bathrooms. And um it's just so delightful uh and a wonderful example of designed play. Um and finally, final example, um I've been working with these amazing organizations, Games for Change and Action for Democracy, and we've been thinking about democracy as a design problem. And this summer, we're bringing together game designers and policy experts to think about how can we play with the structures of democracy and maybe poke around in those systems, do something unexpected and inappropriate, and maybe uh move them playfully into a new and better space. Um, I don't know what's going to happen there, but definitely wish me luck. We'll need it. Whatever you do, keep playing. And thank you very much, — Eric Zimmerman. Uh, that was amazing, Eric. That was amazing. Okay, we have come to the end of session two. Play is a craft live stream community. Please stick around for exclusive interviews, games, TED animations, and behind the-scenes moments, including another piece on the accordion by Maria, and the chance to watch Eric talk more about games while he plays them. Um, and before you see all of that, we want to make sure that everyone in this room and also on the live stream knows about an incredible day that is coming up. Mark your calendars. June 11th is the International Day of Play here in New York. The United Nations lawn will please, yeah, give a round of applause for International Day of Play. Here in New York, the United Nations lawn is going to transform into playtime at the UN. It's an open air playground where children, leaders, and everyone else can come together to celebrate the joy, power, and importance of play. And it is going to be amazing, and we hope that you will all be there. And to join, there is a form that you can fill out online. Nothing more playful than a form. You can find that form online at ted. com/play along with all of the details. Okay, live stream. Please enjoy the studio session. Alex, I'm handing it back off to you.

— Hello. — Thank you, Chris. We're back. We're and better than ever. I'm Alex Rosenthal. — And I'm Alexander Panzer, and we're here in the TED atplay studio. Um, where we continue the conversations and get a little playful. Um, speaking of which, we loved hearing about the upcoming International Day of Play coming up right around the corner on June 11th. So, you can go to ted. com/play to find out how to participate and get all the details on this exciting event. — We have a lot of fun coming up for you now. We have interviews, we have games, we have a really special performance that Alexander is about to introduce. — That's right. Fresh off the TED stage, we have a special live performance from Maria Tellesa. Hi. Amazing. — Hello. — Wow. Thank you so much, Maria. That was beautiful. — Thank you. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, while we have this here, can you give can you just give me a little tour of your instrument? What do all these buttons do? — Yes. So, this is a chromatic B system button accordion. And there are 120 buttons on the left side and 106 on the right side. — Do you know what they all are? — Yes. Unfortunately, yes. — Wild. — But yeah, it's a beautiful instrument. This here in the middle is the bellows, which I push in and out, and they control the airflow and dynamics. Um, and then up here I have a little bit of a fun feature. They're called chin switches, which I operate like this, which change the tone of the sound, so I can imitate other instruments. — Oh, wow. And so then, so these are like the notes sort of. And then what are these ones? — These are also same as here. These are registers which also change the tone of the sound. And they are just duplicated up here for easier access. — Amazing. Oh wow. Well, um, you're such a beautiful accordionist. This was I'm so blown away. Um I'm like very uh like moved by how expressive the accordion is and it actually Okay. It inspired me. I want to know if you want to play a little game with me. — Okay. Yeah. — I had this idea that rather than send people like emojis or like reaction gifts, I wish I could send them like little accordion phrases. — Okay. So, I wondered if I could show you an emoji and you could, you know, do a little accordion moment to express whatever that emoji is expressing. — Okay. Awesome. Yeah. — All right. I have a few scenarios here. Okay. — Okay. So, this is the first one. Your friend sends you a text. The text says, "Did you eat my sandwich? I was saving that for a special occasion. Why are you always eating my sandwiches? " And instead of sending this emoji, you send this. — Yeah, spot on. Um, okay. Okay, another one. Your friend posts a picture of a panda hugging a koala that's hugging a kitten, and it's just too much. So, instead of sending this emoji, — what do you send? — Um, I'm sorry. I know I came up with this game, but I love it. Okay. Last one. Um, your friend realizes that you've been selling her sandwiches on the black market and using the money to buy koalas. — Oh my gosh. — She said, she texts you, "You'll never get away with this. " Instead of sending, let's see, this emoji, — you send this. I am so impressed. That is um Yeah, I think we should record all of these and make them available. — Yeah, those are definitely real life scenarios. — Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was inspired by you and your Tik Tok. I'd only assumed. Um Okay. Well, I know this is a very heavy instrument, so I'm going to let you put it down. — Thank you. — Yeah. — And um and what so one of the things I learned from your talk is that you've been playing the accordion since you were very little, right? How little again? — Six years old. So when you were learning to play, were you did you think of it as learning or playing? Because you're in that age where you know you find it's almost like a toy. Um yeah. And how do you see what do you is there a difference between the two? How do you think of that? — I would say yes, there is a difference. And for sure when I was little, I definitely viewed it more of as play. Um I kind of I didn't know how to read sheet music when I started. So I played everything by ear — and I would hear all of the notes as we could use Lego pieces for example. I each note represented like a Lego brick and I would have to shape them uh into whatever I wanted it to sound like uh to shape the dynamics and just how the phrase of the music flowed. Um so yeah, I would say I definitely viewed it as more of a fun experience rather than learning staring at a piece of paper and reading sheet music. — Do you think that impacted how your relationship to the instrument? — Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yeah, I would say when I started learning uh to read sheet music, it was honestly very difficult for me because I was just so used to hearing everything and transcribing it to my instrument and I almost wanted to quit when I was about 9 10 years old. — So I would say having this relationship of fun with your instrument is very important. Well, how did you tap back into that then when you reached this place of like this is hard, I'm experiencing sense of failure and like the potential to fail. How did you tap back into uh the sort of joy and delight of play? — Well, thankfully I had my dad with me — and he's actually here supporting me tonight uh who is my teacher and uh we play in a duet together and we arrange a lot of our own music. So for that I don't need any sheet music. So for breaks we always um put aside the piece that I was learning on sheet music and we played the piece that we were arranging together and that definitely gave me a break from the stressful aspects of music and to kind of really enjoy it and express myself. — Oh that's beautiful. did um so I mean h how many years would you say did it take for you to become proficient and I'm sure you know there's probably a smaller size accordion for a little person or yeah okay — yeah I started on a very small accordion but honestly I'm absolutely still learning this instrument is super complex um I can't say I have mastered it and I don't know if I ever will but um professionally uh performing I started with my dad around four years ago So it took me about maybe eight nine years to get — Yeah. Exactly. — Well, and that's what's so interesting um is that this was a lot of work. Like this is you have to put hours into this and practice and learn like you said reading music and um — but what what is the relationship between work and play? Because I think for a lot of people that sounds like — tedious and um and it I'm sure it is to a certain extent, but how how does like is work is play hard sometimes or Yeah. How do you think about that? — It can definitely be hard for sure. I am still in high school and I'm graduating this year. So every time — Congratulations. — Thank you. — So every time I get home I'm usually pretty tired. Um and sometimes I view my instrument as sort of a release and a break from the school and socializing. But sometimes it is a little bit difficult just because I'm physically tired and this is a very physically demanding instrument. — So I would just say I have to get my rest in to be able to enjoy um the play after all of my school and work. — Yeah. — And well, so do you have any advice for someone who is interested in picking up an instrument and learning and kind of daunted by just the slog of it? like knowing I'm a beginner, I'm going to get everything wrong. Yeah. Do you What would you tell someone trying to learn a new instrument? — I would say it is definitely never too late because even if you don't necessarily perform uh with your instrument, it's uh is very good for your brain. Very good. — And um I would say being a beginner shouldn't scare you. You're trying new things and people should be proud of that. — So, — oh my gosh, I want to learn. That sounds fun. Maybe pick up the accordion. — I mean, and then I would get a workout too, — for sure. — Yeah. Um, okay. Well, so does that sort of sense of play, you must dedicate a lot of time to your instrument, but does that um bleed into other parts of your life? Do you explore in other disciplines to help you inform your accordion playing or Yeah. How does that affect the rest of your life? — I would say being a musician actually makes me really good at math. So that definitely helps me at school. — Good plug for sure. — Yeah. — And um just — also obviously it's very physically demanding so I need to go to the gym so that is also part of my daily routine because I have such a heavy instrument and I actually really enjoy it. I didn't think I would until I started. So — that's amazing. And do you dabble in any other instruments or? — Yes, I my secondary instrument would be vocals — because when me and my dad play in a duet, we like to have more variety in our program. So I picked up vocals a few years ago and it's been going really well. So the accordion as accompaniment for vocals is very interesting. And I also play a little bit of percussion during our concerts, but I've of course picked up other instruments such as the flute, guitar, and violin for background knowledge. Yeah, go but never professionally. So — Oh, that's amazing. Maria, thank you so much for sharing your gifts with us here today and for joining us in the studio. — Thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure. — Absolutely. Um, well, we have another TED speaker coming up shortly, but first, check out this TEDED animation on the missing ingredient in how we learn. Can you guess what it is? I'm pretty sure you can. Spoiler, it's not human. — In 1851, the Prussian government feared that Friedrich Frobble's scandalous new approach to education might teach disobedience and lead to peasant rebellion. The name of Fubble's school, kindergarten. Its controversial curriculum included singing and dancing, gardening, painting, and playing. Prussia banned kindergarten, enforcing a strict system of supervised classrooms and government approved lessons that clearly separated learning time from playtime. And over the next century, the Prussian model inspired public school systems around the world. But while it might seem traditional now, the belief that play and learning are at odds with each other is a relatively new idea. Before the last few centuries, children around the world spent most of their time learning through play, observing and mimicking adults, roaming their surroundings, and sharing what they learned with friends and family. Many communities and educators still believe Clay is one of the best teachers we have and they've taken a variety of approaches to keep this kind of self-directed learning alive. In his kindergartens, Froel provided specially designed toys to help kids learn concepts like volume, density, and even the principles of geometry. And today, Monttoauri schools continue to embrace toybased learning. Monttoauri toys or materials as they call them are rigorously designed to isolate and teach specific concepts. For example, to learn math, babies and toddlers might explore dimension with fat wooden cylinders, then unlock more spatial reasoning with a set of pink stackable blocks. Older children tackle a set of brown stairs to learn about height, while a series of red rods reveals the secrets of length and balance. Teachers gently guide this exploration by asking students questions and suggesting material specific activities like arranging the rods in order of size. But Montasauri classrooms also have a range of ages and low teacherto student ratios to encourage students to explore the materials together and learn from each other. Reio Alia schools also give students sensory objects to explore together, but they're especially focused on letting the students direct their learning. Every corner of a Reio classroom is designed to reward curiosity, allowing students to follow their interests and express themselves with a variety of artistic tools. Even when Reio teachers do assign formal projects, they start by asking students open-ended questions from how to make a model ship float or sink to how they should decorate an art studio. Then they designed the project to explore the students assumptions and interests, weaving in their curriculum along the way. Skeptics might argue that self-directed learning lets kids avoid the subjects they're not as interested in, leading some students to fall behind. But most of these schools use an interdisiplinary approach to ensure no subject is left behind. For example, in projectbased laboratory schools, the day might start by solving a number puzzle, then using the answers to compose a piece of music or three-dimensional art. By choosing to explore overlapping concepts through multiple projects, teachers can show different practical applications that make abstract ideas feel concrete and useful. In all these models, giving students more agency comes with challenges. Different kids have different needs, so educators have to be sensitive and able to adapt. From rearranging the room to redirecting attention, teachers need to respond to each student while maintaining a safe, playful environment for all. This requires buckets of emotional intelligence, prep time, and trust from both parents and their school's administration. But for many educators and learners, the effort is worth it. A 2023 analysis of over 30 studies found that Montasauri education outperformed traditional schools in language and math learning as well as in developing creativity and social skills. And these benefits go beyond early learning. Many universities are moving from lecture-based learning towards long-term projects and roundt discussions. MIT's lifelong kindergarten tries to extend a playful creativity first approach to learners of all ages, giving students a variety of physical and digital tools to explore, experiment, and express themselves. Some architecture and engineering students even use Froal's special toys to hone their design principles and spatial reasoning, showing that it's not only children who learn through play. If you've been watching our live stream, you'll know that our next guest just gave an epic TED talk. Eric Zimmerman is a game designer who makes video games, tabletop games, and museum installations. He's also a professor at uh NYU's Game Center, a program he helped create at Tish School of the Arts. Eric. — Hello. First of all, congratulations on your talk. Thank you, Alex. You were absolutely incredible. Um, I hope we can now just have some low-key low stress fun. — Yes, absolutely. But I always feel like if you're going to talk about play, why not actually play a little bit, right? So, that's — that's what I feel, too. Well, that you're in the right place. — That's what we're doing right here. — It's gonna be all play all the time, — right? Okay. — Okay. So, we're So, we'll also talk, but we're going to play while we talk. All right. — So, we're going to play frictionary. — I am ready to multitask and Yeah. Slash embarrass. — Okay. Good. It's it's hard, but you know, but we make do. So, we're going to draw names. It's like Lego Pictionary basically. Okay. We're going to draw words out of this hat. Um we're each going to do it at the same time. So, so please take one. — This is a Yeah. Okay. Find a nice hat that you — hat. Thank you. — I'm going deep from the bottom. All right. I'm not really a hat guy, so I appreciate your uh compliment with the hat. Um, so we're going to build while we talk, and whenever you want me to guess what you've created, I'm just going to put it here so we can get a close-up shot that people at home can guess. — And vice versa. Okay. — Yeah. You won't be — I just saw your — You saw mine. You're a poker player, first of all. — Well, you should poker cards aren't see-through. — No, I I read it fully. Yeah, it was fully exposed. I'm a horrible poker player. — So, yeah. So, let we have to be much like this one better. are secretive about this. — Okay. I got — Okay. All right. I'm game. I'm going to All right. Hide my — Oh gosh. — Okay. Well, first of all, what are you playing right now? — Oh, what am I playing right now? I'm playing this Lego brictionary. — But what are you playing when it's not ex this exact moment? — You know, I have different games. There's games that I have to play like for school. Like I just played through a bunch of my master's thesis students. Awesome. Uh awesome games. Uh we just had a um showcase last night uh of all of their work over the semester. So that was um that was pretty amazing. Um there's games that I play uh for fun. And then there's games that I like can't stop playing and should have stopped playing, but I'm continuing to play. So that's that would fall that would be Hearthstone Battlegrounds. — Yeah. Very mainstream. Like I often have very experimental tastes in games, but I have to say that's maybe the game that has um really hooked me. — The most power for you. — Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I guess there's nothing wrong with that. You know, we need to o own up to our um we need to — I don't want to say addictions, but whatever our habits, our proclivities. Uh — now that's a game that you get like ranked in and higher rundles or whatever. — Yeah. Do you have like a rund that you want to do you have a rank you want to brag about? You don't have to share it. — I'm usually up in the six or 6 thousands, I guess, if that means anything. — That's a big number. — Yeah. You know, points numbers. That's that. What else is there? — I don't know what number they go up to. Okay, I'm going to give you something to guess. — Yeah, they go up to a million. So, it's actually a horrible score. — You're on your way. What are you doing? I haven't even started yet. — Oh, you're showing the — I'm showing the people at home. — Okay. But um it's rather small. Okay. I I'll show you. — Okay. — It's a little abstic version of this. — Well, I mean it looks like a — It's not a stoplight because you would have used yellow, red, and — I do love traffic lights. — Yes. But it's a it's affirmatively not a — Okay. And is it um — This is part of it. — Okay. That It's a Is it like a shovel? — Okay. — With like there's like a large area at the bottom. — These are significant. I'm gonna Okay. Got a moment. If you uh are inspired at home, uh please try to guess what this is to share. Save me the entire Goodime with it. Okay. Right. — Oh, it's a loot or guitar. — Yeah, guitar. — It's a string instrument. — Perfect. You got it with that with little so little cluing. Okay, I'm gonna draw — Oh, that's so good. — Wait a second. — I have a guess of what that is. — But hold on. — Wait, wait. This is not a basketball court. — You got like a This is like a Lego kit level build that you have on. — I'm not sure about that, but I'll um — Oh, actually this — Okay. It confuses me some part of what you're doing. — Yeah, I know. It's okay. Well, you just have to bear with me and we'll we're going to get there. Um. — All right. Well, let me ask you more question. So, um the U Masters projects that you Yes. They showcased last night, is that a combination of video games and tabletop? — It is mostly video games, but they do tabletop games too. Like there's one of them was called The Morning After. And the idea is that um you are a all of your friends went out last night, but you actually um uh got drunk and are hung over and like missed all of the excitement. When you wake up in the morning, they all have these kisses all over them. So it's a detective game, but instead of figuring out who killed who, the idea is, and this is the tagline from the students, who kissed who. And so it actually it's a little bit Oraen-ish. You actually you get media, you go into photographs and you have to actually reconstruct text chats between your friends and like through logical deduction figure out like oh if you were here and this was before you got the kiss and then — you kissed you at this date and then it's sort of it's a mystery game of logical deduction. It is so funny and so cool. If you haven't played Oberdin, Return of the Oberdin, one of the best games ever created, kind of genre defining for detective games. Um, and I highly recommend it. It's one of two games that I say if I could erase my memory, I would I would so I could play it again. Oh, I like that. — Um, okay. — Not the erasing memory part, but the, you know, you know what I'm talking about. All right. Let me see. I'm probably going a little too far on this, but let me let me see if I can just if I can attach this last bit, then — I thought I knew what you were building and now I — And now you don't because I've taken it — in a dramatically different direction than — Okay. — But I'm still going to guess what I thought it was. — Yeah, you're gonna — um — Okay. — Well, that game sounds very cool. — It is very cool. And I have to tell you, that is just one of many Lego pieces I'm dropping on the floor. That is just one of many incredible games that was there that night. Um, tabletop games, video games, and other game experiments at the NYU Game Center. Okay. This is my um — here. Put it up here. So Okay. Beheading, — right? Okay. So, uh, th this is it's almost got I'm almost got too many ideas going on here, by the way. — Yeah. No, it's a whole di Let's see if — I was originally going to say basketball. No, — it's not a basketball court. — Is this like a movie? Is this a property? It's got — No, it's a simple object as a whole. — A simple object with a panda and a disembodied head. — What? A railroad crossing? — No. Um, but you you are correct. — A sign, a billboard. — Uh, no. You're kind of getting close, though. This is sort of a type of a sign. Uh — stop sign. — No, I mean it is a kind of like — iconographic marker of something. It's just not — a sign. — Classic sign. — Yes. — Um Okay. I will I'm going to give you another clue right now. I'm going to give you a clue right now. — Okay. — Um by putting — Oh, are we in the ocean? — It's a boat. A sailboat. — A specific specifically — a Titanic. — Specifically — mast crows nest. — Yeah. And well this is a — sale. Sail. — Yeah. — Sail. — Okay. I think I'm just going to put us all. — It's not sail. — No, it is a sail. It's a sailing specific. It's a specific kind of — missing mast — boat. — Sail. What kind of boat? — What? — All right. I'm glad pirate ship. ship. — IT'S A PIRATE SHIP. OH, YES. OH, I'M SORRY. I apologize. Yeah. See, it kind of went overboard — side by side what I've created with what you've created just to show the how our brains work slightly differently. — See, this is supposed to be the pirate flag with the skull and crossbones. And then there's a pirate on the ship. And Okay. And this is water. So, — it's not me. No, sorry. It is me. It's not you. It's me. Um, yeah. You did something amazing. Okay. I made this for you. — Oh, this is another one. — Okay. This is a guitar after you've broken the frets off of it. And it's just the bottom part of a guitar, I believe. Because you've recycled the guitar. — I have recycled the guitar because it was there. — Okay. But that's not what this is. — No, it's another also not a stop sign, even though it does have red and green on it. — Still not a stop sign. — This is an abstraction. Can you tell me which way is up? — Does it matter? — So, traditionally, this would face towards you like like so like um — Oh, is it a not a baseball plate? No, it would just be like the brown thing without anything else. — Yeah, but — I'm giving you another one to do when you're ready. — Um Oh, we're doing — When do I When does this — Okay. It's kind of a punishment. — It's kind of an Well, I'll tell you. It was something that appeared in your talk. Not something that was said by you. — Is it a piece of cheese? — You're very close. It involves cheese. — A piece of pizza. — Yeah, there you go. It is a slice of pizza. It's — Okay. I like that. That was a good That was I like that clue because it was also a call back to the talk. — Exactly. Watch the talk if you haven't already. Okay. Question. — Am I really doing another one of these? — Uh you don't have to. You could just build something random if you want. — No. All right. I will — I got to get another one, too. Um — Okay. Okay. You talk a lot about breaking rules. — I Oh, I thought that you were just going to end that sentence with you talk a lot. — No, no. You talk the perfect amount. — Too much. Maybe. — Yes. — Is that fair to say? — That is fair to say. The rules break. I have a rule book called The Rules We Break. That's a compendium of all the ways that I teach game design or really teach design through games and play. — Um but yeah, go ahead. — It's quite good. Um okay. You have a design exercise about modding tic-tac-toe. — Oh yes, I do. Yeah, absolutely. Have you do you feel like there is a game a traditional game that you've taken and made a superior version of it in the course of tinkering with rules? — Um well they're definitely people definitely improve on tic-tac-toe. — Yeah, — people I definitely have seen people improve. — Kind of a low bar, right? — Yeah, but this is what you — Sorry, Mr. Tic Tac. — This is your qu tic tac. Sorry, a folk spirit that invented uh tic tactoe. Um, so I um yeah, I'll give you a couple of examples. One one example of an improvement on tic-tac-toe that I've seen emerge out of that exercise is just you it's tic-tac-toe, but you play to lose instead of win. So if your opponent gets three in a row, then you win. And what I love about that is it's so elegant — and it's probably — force a win for them. — It's probably a solvable problem. like it's probably not maybe it's slightly more deep, but I just love it because — you can play it and use all of your tic-tac-toe knowledge and it's like tic-tac-toe is all fresh and new again and we can all appreciate the elegance of that just little reversal of the winning conditions that suddenly transforms the whole game. And I'll give you one more example. Um — uh something else that I've seen come up actually let's say it's medium com like a lot of people expand the grid and things like that. Sometimes people do multiple tic-tac-toe. So they'll do like nine tic-tac-toe grids and then you what you do is you make a move somewhere and then your opponent makes a move somewhere. So then — all of the grids. — Yeah. Across all the grids and when I win in one of the games then I get a point. Sometimes people play like I'm actually trying to get tic-tac-toe within the grid of nine and sometimes it's just for points. But um you're playing it's like a tic-tac-toe grid of tic-tac-toe games if that makes sense. Yeah, it's a meta tic it's a 3x3 grid of tic-tac-toe games — and you have to win and you're deciding you can play in any of them — but you have to win a meta tic tac-toe where you have to win three games. Okay, that's cool. I like that. That's — um Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that that does work well. — Can I show you a song that I learned? I um I we visited the Lego headquarters and there are a lot of — Lord it over me. Why don't you? I would love to visit. Why didn't you invite me? I would have loved to come. — I would if I could next time. Okay. So, I saw they have a lot of Lego bricks on — a spontaneous response to — they don't have Lego bricks on the table and um and people have been building something. I saw somebody do this um which I didn't know you could do with Lego bricks and it it's sort of like — oh yeah that's like a 90 degree like an obvious — that was all of the lasers on my um you know — so you can as a seven-year-old — uh it blew my mind. — Yeah. my entire life until last year. I knew you could do something like that. — Yeah, that's a I used all those skinny long pieces like that's how you get the — way to have the curve. That's why you're a game designer. I don't know. — Um — you saw the potential. You saw the break of the rule. — Okay. Here's I got one for you. — Uh it sort of went a little off the rails. — Oh, there's a head at the end of that. — Yeah. I mean, here let's I'll just stick it on here, but you don't know where it's supposed to be. Um again, it's a it's an abstraction. Okay. Is that Is the head a head or is it just a yellow? — The head is a head. No, the head's a head. — Oh, is this like a It's a gallows. It's a scarecrow. — You're on the right track with scarecrow. — Okay. It's like a Is it It's a Is it a crucifixion? I don't Somehow I would think that's not that wasn't actually — that would be like sacrilegious or you know, it could be. Yeah. Not just religious religion. — That's the game we're playing now to see who we can. — All right. But the basis seems significant to me. The base is — because the base is the most substantial part of this. — The base is probably the creation where I was constructing in a reasonable way. — Uh, okay. The base. So, what is that? It's like a pillar or a — podium or uh — Okay. I Let's do a mod because I think that part is becoming confusing. — Oh, — okay. This is — this is after time. This is time passes and this is what you're left with. — Oh, it's like a sand timer. — Okay. You're No, you're on the right track. It is a it is like a figurative thing, — right? — Um but like the passage of sand through a timer, it has transformed. — Okay. But it's shrunk over time. — Yeah. Yeah. — Exactly. And it has a head. — So what what does not grow but has a like a living creature riddle would grow over time. — It's not a cor. — Exactly. So, this is something with a head that shrunk. — Yeah. — Is it like — It isn't old, but it lives in the cold. — A snowman that melted. — That's what was on the piece of paper. That was just my inability to find more. — I'm going to give you one. — Okay. — But I don't know if you're going to get it. So, this is — that's the in Queens. — Yeah. No, this is it's not architectural. It's much smaller. In fact, I'm gonna give you some This is for context. — It's the UFO from Men in Black. This is for context. — Okay. A trash can, a barbecue. — Uh, — it's probably the context would be more like this. — A flying tree. — No, this would be larger in context. — Oh, okay. Oh, so it's small like a like recessed lighting on a path. — It looks like that. It looks too much like that. Let me I'm going to also give you some more context. I'm gonna I need it. — Um, — you're going to keep building. — Okay. No, no. I'm going to perform the clue for you. I'm Oh, that's interesting. I got it. — Okay. Wait. Now, now I'm possibly more confused. — All right. That's right. There's a lot of things that one could Oh, it's a mushroom. — It is a mushroom. A — death cat Some of which are poisonous. — Yeah. Not all mushrooms. — Contact. Okay. So, mushroom is really hard because it's like how do you — Yeah. the topology. — What I like is that the premise is that oh just the pure Lego can express like no you and I are having to give clues and hints and I like your transformation of the snowman. So I like it that so what's interesting about this game is that it's not just about Lego construction which is what one would think but it's really also about — as the clue giver you're having to like and you know this because you're a puzzle designer too. It's like how do you give a clue so that someone can kind of inch towards a solution but you're not giving it away. Exactly. Right. So it's this is a sense in which game designers are like — we're not performers but we it's like we're sculpting the performance of the player. Right. We want to give them that satisfaction of that aha moment. We don't want to steal that from them by giving them a clue that's too obvious, you know? — Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Uh it's like a lot of other minds. You got to sort of think not how about you're thinking about it, but how are not how I'm thinking about it. How are you going to think about it? — Right. I mean it's um I mean I tried to make the snowman guessable though. I wasn't trying to give you a challenge. I'm just bad at building a — No, no. But that's what I'm saying. What's interesting about this game is that the restrictions of Lego, the abstraction of Lego and our limited supply and limited time forces us into this I had to do it too. It forces us into this clue giving world, right? — We might just need to get good though, right? Like — I don't know. I think that we're I mean we're I think we're doing — we went through a lot of work. — This is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to kind of say that even though we're not just sculpting and just leaving it there like that it part I'm realizing that part of the design of this is the clue giving design. Totally. It's like it's a kind of seduction. — And these are play objects, right? Like they're not meant to be just placed and admired. They're meant to be — Yeah. part of a situation. — Yeah. Well, speaking of puzzles, should we play a puzzle game? — Sure. Okay. — Always ready to play. — Always ready. — Something else. And I'm gonna save you audience from having to watch us painfully. Should I take this off the table? — No. You're good. — Oh, okay. — Yeah. — You're the guest here. You don't have to do stuff like that. — All right. — Okay. We're going to play a word game called Letter Brew. — Okay. So, this is a game. It starts with word letters. Are do you know word ladders where you change — Believe I know what a word ladder is. It's a classic — word game type where you transform a word by changing one letter in the word. — Exactly. So, the first step of this game are word letters. — To bat, for example, change the first letter — to submit. — Okay, good. Can we just make that my game so I don't have to embarrass myself doing a hard one? — You're not going to embarrass yourself because we're going to do it together. Um, we might co-embarrass ourselves. Okay. So, like boxy and the clue is skeletal actually. — Okay. Um, uh, so bony — bony bony, right? Okay. — My little blank toy franchise with ecquin characters. — Okay. that I like the obviousness of the clue. That would be a pony. My little pony — and uh — or our little pony if we want to share pony. Yeah. Okay. I like that. Yeah. All right. We'll co-parent our pony together. — That sounds great. Cutie marks. — Wow. Who knew? — Who knew what would come out of this podcast? We're I'm now a proud co-parent of a pony. — I know. Yeah. Well, you'll collect your pony when you leave. — Okay. I assume Ted is paying for all costs associated with the pony race. We — have deep pony pockets. — Okay. Possible home for a duck. — That's that is a phrase that sticks in the memory pockets. Pony pockets. Yeah, that sounds like a new Yeah, a new like a new form of song. Okay, — we go to different places. — We have to finish the pond. — What? Oh, — I'm so sorry. I thought we were playing together. — You It was Home for a Duck, I think. — Yeah, I distracted myself. — Trusted you to get that. Okay. Punic where you see that. — So, P just to explain to the viewers. So — the way that I know but the way that this game works is that you actually do three of these separately and then there's this sort of final moment of — Yeah. It all comes together. It's all — that's what I'm terrified of. I feel like the word ladders I'm okay with. — I'll take a clue on that part if we need it. Okay. Punic to lose your cool. — Um panic. — Panic. Okay. Thank you for steering us. Um — my pleasure. In a frenzy frenzy. — I mean panic already is in a frenzy. — I know. Yeah. Even more so. — Um — manic. Oh, manic. All right. I like that. Okay. You don't know the answer. — I don't believe you, bud. I believe — No, I truly don't play this level. — Jocular answer to how did you do that? — Um, — uh, — how did post your answer in the comments? — How did you do that? Um, — maybe no. Here, let's take a clue of uh which letter name to change. — Um, — magic. Ah, — magic. — I like that. How did you do that? — This is ostensibly the easy part of the game. Okay. Uh, pair to what? Aspirin release pain. — Aspirin release pain. I'm going to say it quickly so that they don't think that you're going to get them all. — Chest piece that on. Yep. — All right. I feel like a chess piece that needs to be promoted after this. — No, you just gave a TED talk. You're promoted. — Oh, okay. Good. All right. Well, I like I said, as long as Ted is covering my pony expenses, I'll be all right. — Deep pony pockets — on set. Um — I think it's dawn. — On set as in beginning. Yeah. — I still was thinking like on stage multiple meanings. — Okay. Now, okay. So, this is where we've made three potions down here, right? And we have to transform all three of those words into the same final answer, right? — And we're gonna do that. One of them we're gonna anagram, change the letter order. Um, one we're g it's going to be a rhyme and the other is the other half of a common phrase. It'll be blank this or this blank, right? — So, for example, um, — okay, so one thing that I already know is that magic can't be the rhyme because it seems like — pond and dawn maybe could rhyme. Yeah, — that those seem like the I mean one of them could be an anagram which then — so I bet it's going to be so I think we can place magic there. — Um because — Oh, right. Because logical deduction, right? So — logical deduction. — Can we anagram other half of a common phrase? — Magic. Okay. — Wand. Magic wand. — Magic wand rhymes with pond, — right? — And is an anagram of dawn. — All right. Wow. Magic wand. And so then we type in — magic — wand. Wand wand. Yes. Thank you, — wand. — All right. Hey, we did it. All right. — We did it. — All right. Yeah. Team work. — All right. Nice. — Okay. You want to play a different game? — Nice job. — Yeah. Okay. — Excellent. — I I'm always ready to play more games. — Excellent. Okay. We're going to play a game called the purring test. — Okay. — Um this is a game about trying to wrap your head around like AI generated stuff. It's a game about basically how weird AI is. Um and like much is made of the fact that AI is a black box, right? And but um you know it's impossible to trace the path from input to output. But what one thing you can do is you can learn about things by playing with them, right? That's what this game about is about. It's also about teaching. — And what I like about this game as a vibe is that it is it's using AI, but it's also kind of ridiculing AI all at the same time. — Yeah. And this is not how great AI is. This is like how freaking weird. And should we assume everyone knows what the title refers to the purring test? — No. No, not necessarily. Do you want to build out of Lego as the explanation? — No. — But I will tell you the explanation. All right. So, yeah. How long do we have? Um the touring test, — not purring test, but the Turing test is from the famous mathematician. — Um and this actually originally it was a test of gender. It was a It was um can you actually fool uh an audience into thinking that you're a different gender? And then it came to be used. Yeah. That the original version of the touring test was actually based on a party game about guessing gender, which is super interesting if you think about the kind of cultural politics of computers and but now it's it in its most common usage, it's about trying to guess which of these is a computer and which is a human. And so before the advent of modern large language model AI, um this was actually a big challenge and you could basically and the original game was slipping notes under a door and in this case it's typing text to a computer. Um so the turning test for many years was like an AI test. I think MIT used to run um versions of it where you people would try and guess okay which of these two people is a computer versus — Yeah, exactly. There's a great book called The Most Human by Brian Christian where he enters the competition um with the goal of being so in the test you're typing with someone, right? — And the goal of the AI the programmers was try to get your chatbot to be passed off as you know people to think it's human. He entered as a human and like wanted the most people to think that he's human. So it's all about like sort of figuring out like what are the signifiers of human being. Now, this is already like 10 epochs ago in terms of where AI is now. — Where AI is now, right? Okay. Which brings us to the purring test. — The purring test, right? So, this is a game uh obviously playing off of that. Um, every level has a cat and there's Professor Purring as your guide. So, he's thinking of a food. We have to figure out what that food is. And there are three clues. So, we can and we'll go in order. Write some title ideas for a TED talk given by this food. — Okay. Iron Will, how I became a superfood. again. Um, please type your guesses in the comments. — Confessions of a former salad bar star — and resilience. — Resilience is green. Okay. So, we're definitely talking about a salad element. — Yeah. — Right. It could be kale. Kale, broccoli, uh, — spinach because of the iron. Should we take another clue or you want to guess? — Let's take another clue so that I think that the audience can join us on this adventure. — Confidence. That looks like spinach to me. — Okay. To see the food as a cat. — Yeah. Of course, we have to see that. — That's spinach. It's just weird. — Okay. — Um creepy cat. — Oh, wait. We did it. Yeah. Nice. Yes. Excellent. — So, there three levels every day. — Okay. — Increasing difficulty. I'm thinking of a thing. — A thing. Okay. I like how that's a little more ambiguous than food. — I'm writing a dating profile for this. Okay. This thing. Um Okay. Do you want to do a dramatic reading of the dating profile? Okay. I've been standing in the same place for what feels like forever. And I've learned that patience brings the best light. I thrive outdoors, basking in warm days and clear skies. I appreciate a good sense of direction and people who know how to cast a little light on life's mysteries. — Beautifully delivered. — So, we're talking about something that involves light. Could be a flashlight, a lamp standing in the same — in the same like I mean it could be like a street light or something. — Street light. — I'm also thinking of some of our Lego models that we made are sticking. — Yeah. Okay. I'm going to I'm keep — a culinary dish. — Uh — I would not want to sit on that. Oh, — I think it's a sund dial. — Um — why would you sit on the culinary dish? — Well, I because it looks because it would poke you and that would be funny. — Um hold on that. I'm just wanna I want to double check the now. I'm trying to play your game. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Rushing me through the process. I'm trying to like I mean this is what's interesting about this game is that it's this sort of cognitive you know doing like trying to connect this sort of syncopated — versions of this. — Exactly. It's bringing the two minds together. — Different prompt different outcome. Um — now I'm between two things. I again I don't know the answer to these. — Yeah. I it could be I think we're leaning toward compass. — I could also see compass. — Let's look at the cat. Yeah, — Okay. — Sundial. — Is that that's one word or two words? — The game will accept either, but it's one. — Okay. Very nice. — Okay, cool. Um, this has been so much fun. Thank you for coming and play. I wish we could play all day. — No, I wanted to stop earlier, but now I want to continue. — You wanted to stop earlier. — It's called Lutus Interruptus. I'm like I'm not sorry. It's about the suspended cord. Um, but uh, so congratulations again on your TED talk. — Please collect your pony at the door. — Okay. — And uh, — our pony. Sorry. — I'm such a I got to take responsibility as a parent. Coarent. Yeah. And — I look forward to reaching in those deep pony pockets of 10. — You heard it here first, folks. — All right, Alex. This was so much fun. Thanks, Eric. — Thank you so much.

All right. Um, hello everyone. Good things come in threes and we are here at our third and final session. Play is an adventure. In our last session, we traveled from the bright lights of the London stage to the world of sneakers and then the philosophy behind gameplay. And now somehow we have yet another incredible adventure planned. I genuinely feel like I have experienced more mind-blowing moments in the past few hours than I normally would experience in a decade. And somehow there are still more to come. We have a session chock full of them. Um, also before I introduce our next speaker, I just want to give a really big thank you to the staff and the crew who are making today happen. Um, incredible. Uh I was talking with some of the crew members at at lunch and something they said stuck with me that I just wanted to share which is they I was saying, "Oh, this is such a fun interesting event and they were like, "Yeah, and everyone is so nice and kind and to be at an event where people are able to put things on at such a huge professional level and also treat people with so much uh respect and care, I think, is really exceptional. It shouldn't be, but it truly is. " Um, okay. Who here met Popbot during one of the breaks? Okay, several people have met our robot friend. Um, well, we're gonna learn about Popbot's backstory right now. Our first speaker of the session is an artificial intelligence researcher who worked at MIT's Media Lab and as a professor at Carnegie Melon University's Human Computer Interaction Institute. Please welcome to the TED stage the phenomenal Dr. Randy Williams. In the 1940s, the radio was a transformative technology, but it wasn't an immediate hit. That's because the radios of the early 1900s looked like this. unwieldy contraptions of exposed wires and glowing vacuum tubes like a science fair project gone wrong. And it wasn't until 1929 when radio started to look like this with its sleek bake light, that's a kind of plastic shell, that they became insanely popular, but at a critical cost, transparency. What happens when technology becomes a black box and we stop being able to see what's going on inside? Fast forward 100 years. Today, the sci-fi artificial intelligence devices of our dreams have been woven into the very fabric of modern life. But like the radio, these systems are bake lighted. We've hidden the machine behind frictionless interfaces, beneath friendly voices, and inside children's toys. Over the past decade, I've had a lot of conversations with kids about AI as an MIT researcher and founding member of Day of AI, a nonprofit creating opportunities for millions of children around the world to learn about how AI works. And here's what I've been seeing. These devices mimic intelligence and friendliness so well that children learn to trust them sometimes more than they trust themselves. And there is real danger of children becoming overly reliant on or inappropriately attached to their smart toys. That said, with some intentional choices on the parts of adults, we can help children see the technology for what it really is. objects that they can play with or even program rather than entities that they should look to for all the answers. My journey exploring kids and their relationships with AI began early in my days at MIT working on this fluffy, adorable social robot, Tega. So, Tega being a social robot means that its goal is to help people with their goals. Social robots are used throughout healthcare, customer service, and education. In Tega's case, we were building it to see if a robot could help young children as they were learning how to read. Let me show you a quick clip of Tega in action. — I'm lavender. — Oh, — what are we trying to find? — We are trying to find lavender color stuff. — Okay. — The word was lavender. — Yes. What is lavender though? — Lavender is purple. — Yes, just like my friend loves lavender. — So, as you saw, it's Tega's job to keep the child engaged in the story. Tega will ask questions, add funny commentary, and of course weave in that target vocabulary for the week. And it was my job to introduce Tega and get children oriented to how to use it. So one day I come into the study room and I say, "Hi, my name is Randy. This is Tega. You're going to read some stories with Tega today. Let me show you how it works. " And the girl I was working with, a kindergarter, stops me. No thanks, she says. I know all about robots. I have an Alexa at home and she's my best friend. Watch this. And then she proceeded to show me how my robot worked. What do we make of a response like that? Well, first I thought it was kind of impressive that this girl who again was learning how to read could effortlessly navigate the internet thanks to voice technology. And for context, I had to know how to read, write, and type before I could ask Jesus a question. But for her, not so much. But secondly, I was a little bit disappointed that this girl didn't think that my super cool robot was so super cool. And when I took a step back, I realized it wasn't just her. We are raising a generation of children who are growing up with AI and smart toys. And they tend to see these devices not as virtual assistants or technology, but as friends, distinct beings with a mind, a will, and a soul. And that made me really curious about what children make of this technology. How much do they understand about what's going on? So to investigate that question, I ran a study and I had 30 children between the ages of three and 11 come together to interact with a whole bunch of different smart toys all at once. We had toy robots, talking dolls, textbased chat bots, and of course, plenty of virtual assistants like Alexa and Google Home. One of the girls in the study, her favorite animal, they were slots. She loved slots. She'd been telling us all day how much she loves sloths. And so naturally, when she got hold of an Alexa, she wanted to learn more about slots from Alexa. So she picks up Alexa and says, "Alexa, what do sloths eat? " And then Alexa very helpfully replied, "I'm sorry. I don't know how to help you with that. " The girl looked disappointed for a second and then all of a sudden perked right back up. "Oh, I know," she says. And she picked up a second Alexa. "I'll see if this one knows. " The limitations of AI are not only frustrating and confusing for children, but research in child robot interaction shows that it can make them vulnerable to even more serious risks like manipulation or accidental exposure to inappropriate content or security breaches. And for me personally, even the devices that are marketed as educational or screenfree are still corrupt because they're consumer products. And they seem to be designed as something that can be endlessly engaging or addictive. They want to become your child's best friend and gain their trust so that they can advertise to them or better yet sell that trust back to you for $20 a month. The bottom line is that smart toys open a digital door into children's playtime, bedroom, and hearts. And if you're thinking about opening that door, my advice to you would be to take a very careful look at what's on the other side. The good news is that we can mitigate the risks of AI to children by leaning into something they already do. Kids are natural reverse engineers. Over and over again, I've watched children playing with AI devices, trying to break it, just asking seemingly absurd questions like, "Alexa, how old are you? " Or, "Cosmo, which is a toy robot car, can you jump? " Or, "Hey Google, is it okay if I eat you? " And these questions, while silly, also are an example of children probing the machine about its very nature. plays inherent to how children understand the world, which means that maybe we can use it to help them understand what's happening with the technologies they're interacting with. What if children could take apart and reconstruct their smart toys the same ways that they take apart and reconstruct physical blocks? That was the idea behind another social robot that I worked on, Popot. As you can see, Popot's body is made completely out of Lego bricks. And it's kind of like a typical smart toy, except I built it to make the most complex ideas of modern AI, logical reasoning, machine learning, generative AI, easy to understand through hands-on, child-driven play. The idea was if a four-year-old could understand AI, then anyone can. So, for example, to learn about machine learning, what children would do is they would play rock paper scissors against the robot. Let me show you a quick clip of what that looks like with pop bots. — Okay, go ahead. the beauties of a real life classroom study. So before children could start playing against their potbot, first they had to teach their popot the rules of rock paper scissors. And then as they played the game rounds like that over and over again, what Popout would try to do is pick up on their pattern so that it could predict what move it could play to beat them. And if you're between the ages of four and six, pretty soon it gets hard, if not impossible, to beat your pop bot. There was one boy who was very frustrated by this. And so I planted a mischievous idea in his head. I said, "Well, what if you taught your pop bot the wrong rules of rock, paper, scissors? That way, as you played it, you would win every single time. And he really liked that idea. Our little act of AI sabotage created a unique opportunity to talk about who teaches AI the rules. Well, people do. And so I asked them, well, if you can teach your popot the wrong rules of rock, paper, scissors, how do you know Alexa was taught the right ones? which led to a very insightful conversation where he discussed how much we can trust AI and the importance of verifying what it says with an adult's help just to make sure that Alexa has been taught all the right rules. The big idea that I want children to understand is that AI is not magic. It's a set of rules written by people. And it's up to us, those of us who have been around for a bit longer, to make sure that children aren't being programmed by their toys, but rather things work the other way around. We need to raise a generation of children who know that they are the ones who get to write and even rewrite the rules of AI. And this work, you know, starts at the dinner table. So, you're all sitting down and a question gets asked to the nearest AI chatbot or smart toy. when it responds rather than just accepting that answer. Wonder I wonder why it answered the way it did or ask aloud, do we agree or disagree with that answer? Who do we think wrote the rules to make it work the way that it does? And the thing is, you don't need to know the answers to all these questions or become some sort of AI expert. That's not the point. What children need is a model of what it means to be a curious user of AI. They need someone who will sit down with them, explore the machine, poke at its limits, challenge its responses, and most importantly, dare to rewrite its rules. And I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of what's happening in children's toy boxes. But the bigger picture is that we should all be treating the everyday AI systems that we interact with the same way. I 100% believe that we can help children build safer relationships with their smart toys and we all need to build better relationships between ourselves and the technologies we interact with every day. I believe in a world where no one is left in the dark by technology and where everyone has the inherent right to play a part in shaping the systems that shape our lives. Thank you. Amy, — how's it going? — Fantastic talk. Um, I'd love to ask you just uh one question here, which is um before I was a parent, I had some very u black and white thinking around like screens. I had this pristine vision of I would never use screens with my child at all. And then, as I think many parents have experienced, that crashed into the reality of needing to put sunscreen on him or needing to clip his nails. Um, I I'm wondering AI as a new technology and these smart toys, how do you see parents balancing the, you know, the ideals and the best case with what we want versus the like practical realities of kids being exposed to these things in ways that are sometimes out of our control even as a parent. — Yeah. No, I really love that question. I think first because it gives so much grace to the fact that parenting is hard and there are a lot of challenges. Um, I think in the world of artificial intelligence, something I think a lot about is human wisdom, right? And we've actually been kind of struggling with this problem for a long time. There were books and then the radio and then TV and then the internet and now it's artificial intelligence. And I think the advice from then still rings true now, which is don't leave children on their own to figure it out. Rules are great, but better is to help your child learn how to interact with them in a way that works with your family's values and the ways that you want to engage in the world. So, if you're willing to take that journey with your child, I think that could do a lot of good. — Thank you. That's a great answer. Thank you. Another big round of applause for Andy. — Thank you. — Great job. Okay, so earlier today uh we talked about how play at TED was shaped by young people from around the world through our play themed connect week. And what you're about to see is what that looks like in action. At TED, we create pathways for young people to take ideas from conversation to the stage through our student talks program, which has reached over 2. 7 million students globally, thanks to an incredible community of educators leading those groups, many of whom are here today. Um, big round of applausees educators who are here. And earlier this year, we partnered with the LEGO Group and the LEGO Foundation to host play themed virtual meetups, bringing together more than 300 students from over 27 countries to discuss how play has helped them build real world skills. So, let's take a look at what some of those interactive virtual calls look like. — The message I want to share is that play isn't the opposite of discipline. It's how discipline becomes enjoyable. When learning feels like a game, you stop fearing mistakes and start improving faster. So when we think about learning, we shouldn't always ask how do I work harder. We should make this more playful? — In video games, failure feels different. When you lose, the game simply gives you another chance and it doesn't judge you. It just restarts. And that's what games secretly teach us that failure is not the end. It is a part of the process. Play turns learning into an adventure. It shows you how to solve problems, stay curious, and be creative in a way worksheets or lectures could never. When you're having fun exploring freely, and not afraid to make mistakes, you discover things you didn't even know you could. Play isn't just fun. It's how we grow, learn, and find the confidence to keep trying. — I hope you enjoyed that video. And uh now we're going to hear from one of those youth speakers in person. She is currently a fifth grade student. And Mila is part of this global community, a student talks participant guided by her educator, Lisa Winer, who is here. Um and she is a part of this group of students who helped shape play a TED. This moment right now is a continuation of what we stated earlier. What happens when young people aren't just included, but given the platform to lead? Sometimes what they say is not just for other young people, but it is for all of us, especially the grown-ups in the room. And so Mila is here to offer a perspective about the role that we can all play in these everyday moments. Please join me in welcoming Mila Rohas. A year ago, I was at a water park with my dad and we were waiting in line on a huge green water slide that swirled like soft serve ice cream. It was a hot summer day and his face was beaming. Even while we were waiting in the long lines, he kept turning everything into a game like who could slide down the fastest and we were laughing the whole time. He was relaxed and completely himself in that moment, just like a lot of kids are when they play. When he facetimed us from work later that week, I could sense that his mood was different. He was less happy and more tired. Probably like most adults at work. That contrast stuck with me. It made me realize that play isn't just a childish activity, but something adults need to do to connect more deeply to their families and live life more fully. Adults must add more play to their daily lives. We've all felt that sense of wonder as kids. Finding a new playground, going to Disney or for Thanksgiving, making the big dinner with pumpkin pie and jello salad, and decorating the table with a fresh linen tablecloth, fancy plates, and silverware that we don't put out any other time of year. But sometimes adults forget how rewarding play is because they are too busy or feel like they have too many responsibilities. They rush to unpack. They ask us to sit still for pictures. They miss the magic because they're focused on planning instead of playing. I've seen this in my own family. One Christmas morning, I came downstairs filled with excitement. The house smelled like gingerbread cookies and everything felt special. But when I was opening presents, I was told, "Don't open the next one. Call grandma to thank her and smile for the camera. " Wouldn't it be better if parents were fully engaged with their families? present, curious, and willing to explore without worrying about checking something off a list. What if instead parents did all the really special presents in a scavenger hunt? Parents should enjoy play not because it's productive or efficient, but because it's fun. For kids, this happens naturally. When kids play, they explore without worrying about being right, imagining new games, and inventing rules. Play isn't an escape from real life. It's a way into it. Adults often tell kids to go play, but for adults, their own play gets buried under schedules, expectations, and pressure to be serious. According to the American Jour of Play, adults often have play guilt because their inner voice tells them that play isn't productive and that they should be doing something more beneficial. As responsibilities grow, play is often viewed as immature, unnecessary, or distraction from getting things done. Over time, that belief becomes automatic. Play starts to feel like a waste, even though it's actually one of the most effective ways humans learn, connect, and re regulate stress. UNICEF holds an international day of play to remind us of the importance of play for all ages. But it doesn't need to be so big. Adults don't need to add more things to their to-do list just to benefit from play. They just need to bring a play mindset of curiosity and exploration into responsibilities they already have. Take parenting for example. Instead of just managing schedules and routines, what if parents modeled exploring and curiosity by racing who could pick up the most toys or clothes? Or while washing their car, starting a water fight, or after work, having a 30-second dance break to your favorite songs? What if before dinner, everyone looks through your pantry or fridge to make a work of art with anything they can find, and you serve it as a fun appetizer for dinner? What if families just take one night a week to play, relax, and have fun together, doing things like setting up a pickle ball court right in the middle of the living room? Tonight, ask a parent to start a themed game night. Ask to plan a family trip so that it has fun activities that both kids and parents will enjoy. Anything to stay connected. In my own family, I've seen a play can have a real impact on adults. I go on walks with my dad and my little sister. We talk, laugh, and breathe for a moment instead of rushing through the day, giving him a chance to unwind after work. On Friday nights, my mom and I make pizza together. It's messy and creative, and it reminds her of something she loved as a kid. These moments don't take much time, but they change how we feel afterward. Connected and happier. Kids, we need to remind adults to play again. Parents, what did you love to do when you were 11? Playing doesn't have to be big or perfect. In fact, the more creative it is, the better. It just has to be shared because play isn't something we need to grow out of. It's with. It helps us stay curious, connected, and human at every age. Thank you. Mila Rojas. Wow. — How h how great is Mila? It's uh I you know this is such a great example of she's so much to teach us. And also, you know, I was like nervous. Oh, you're a fifth grader giving a talk. Is this intimidating? Are you going to be nervous? And then last session, she was like, "Hey, I'll get up on stage and be the one who does the Shirley Temple game. " like she's got it under control. She's perfect. Um, you know, before I was a comedian and before I hosted anything for Ted, I was a fifth grade teacher. And Mila just reminds me of like all the best students that I ever worked with. One of the things that I thought was so fun about being a fifth grade teacher. Um, and all the teachers in the room know this is that you could never predict what was going to happen, right? Like sometimes I would give out a worksheet and I would just be like, "This is just a regular old geometry worksheet. Name the following shapes. " I was expecting like, you know, hexagon, something like that. And instead, and look, that's indisputably correct. That is Gabriella. We can all agree. Or another time, uh, I gave out a homework assignment and got this back. I am sorry, my pencil is not working. Written in pencil. Really clever. I love the audacity of trying to pass that one off. Okay. Um, our next speaker is one of the leading international scholars on children's agency in education. Her work focuses on how adults and children can play together to strengthen creativity and problem solving in diverse classrooms and in early learning settings. She is the co-founder of the international playworld network and a leader of the child research group at the University of Helsinki. Please welcome Anna Rano. I'd love for you to think about a classroom full of let's say 20 sevenyear-old children. They are all different. There's a child who loves school and can easily concentrate through noise. Another child needs a lot of physical comfort and happily climbs to his teacher's lap if it's free. One student has to fit it to concentrate. The one at the back learned early on that adults and their promises cannot be trusted. She tried to keep her distance. Next to her is a boy who loves drawing dragons. and he drew this when the task was to craft holiday decorations. Now imagine you're a teacher in this classroom and it is your task to include all these different children in one activity. It's easy to see what happens. One or two children do not fit in and become excluded. Why is that? In most other phases of our lives, it would be odd to think that everybody was able to do the same activity, enjoy sim similar things or develop at the same pace. Schools, however, are historically places where sameness is expected from all. This makes many children and adults alike suffer in these institutions. I am a researcher and teacher educator in Finland and I believe that this does not need to be the case. Radical inclusion is possible in any early learning classroom through something called play worlds. Play worlds are adult child joint play often structured around a piece of literature or a work of art like Mrol's play world or Alice in Wonderland play world. They were originally developed by a Swedish scholar Gunila Lingquist and they are now studied worldwide by our research teams. The adults and children create the world of a chosen story in the classroom. And then the class plays, interacts, and undertakes adventures together with both adults and children in roles like you see here in this illustration of a play world. The teacher as a wits. The children take initiative and the adults listen carefully. I've had the privilege to of learning from more than dozens of play worlds and together with my colleagues and I want to mention here especially Beth Farhold we have seen how play worlds can change the way schools are just a moment. Okay, let me give you an example of a how a play world might look like uh in a kindergarten class. And just to note that these are fictional examples to protect the privacy of the participants kind of composite stories of all the things we've seen in the many plays we've studied. So the teacher Johanna create u studied by reading aloud the first half of a famous uh Slavic folktale Babayaka to the children but instead of reading aloud the second half of the story the class collectively wrote and directed their own resolution to the story's central conflicts. These are the set pieces and props that the class created over the course of a year. This is uh for example Baba Yaga's tower and these are magical creators caves that the children created. And that over there is Baba Yaga's traps trap in which he loved to captivate everybody she could. And these are the trees and a lampost in the forest of the story. And this is a drawing by a child of a hut on chicken thicken legs. It's very important in the story of Babayaga. And it was created in the classroom. And this is the wardrobe inside the hut that became a portal from the everyday life of the classroom to the magical reality of the play world. Even the adults used it to keep the magic alive. You know, one night um the teacher Johanna even returned to the class after the children had gone home just to exit the play world. We had this wardrobe in case she had forgotten to do it earlier during the day. But in this classroom, like in many others, there were some children who had hard time participating in classroom activities, uh, Viola was often uh inattentive and disruptive. And when the class was discussing how to bring everyone safety from the evil Baba Yaga, Viola suggested blowing up the whole school to save the magical creatures from Babayaga's trap. It's easy to see how Viola and her plan would be excluded from a normal classroom. But this is a play world and in play world the children, not the adults are the experts. So the children negotiated with Viola and asked whether she could consider blowing up some props instead of an entire school. And Viola agreed and said it's this is a good plan because everybody gets to do their own plan. But the following week, Viola was again inattentive, disruptive. So the teacher had to speak directly to her. And the teacher said, "Viola cannot be part of the plan unless she commits to go through with it because everybody is dependent on her to save the magical creatures from the Babayaga and her disruptive behavior might alert Baba Yaga. " So something extraordinary happened. Viola agreed to participate and when it was her time to carry out her part of the plan, she first carefully checked that everyone is protected, then drew the bomb to Babayaga's trap and engaged everyone in a dramatic countdown due the explosion. Now, here's why I find this example so powerful. In most other classroom settings, wheelless behavior would be considered problematic or something that we should be preventing from happening. But inside a play world, it made sense and it even helped to sell solve some problems. Va's story is also a great example of a phrase I believe teachers, mentors, parents should be saying as much as possible. Why not? If a child turns to you to ask for something or suggest something, it's often cognitively difficult for us adults because it means changing our plans, right? or going into different direction or as we perceive it wasting our precious time. So our first intuition is to say no or maybe later. But before you rush to respond, try asking yourself why not? And sometimes there's a clear reason to say no. But often there isn't. And when there isn't, you can go along with your children in that unpredictable direction. and doors will open. Here is um another example I love. And this time, let's say from a first grade classroom, the teacher Tom wanted to develop a play world based on a children's book of Reuben, a bird who accidentally flies in through a child's bedroom window and needs that child's help to get back home. So the children read the story and imagine how Reuben might look. But then COVID hits, but the children continue thinking and talking about Reuben. And then after several months of distance learning, the children return to class that one morning to find Reuben, an actual puppet on a window sill of the classroom. Tom, the teacher, plays Reuben, and the children just love it. They want to include it in all activities. They sing their favorite songs to it. They feed it. They uh build a nest for it during the art classes. And they even teach some math to it. But at this semester also in this classroom, some children were seriously on the edge of disengagement. There was Alma for whom it was difficult to sit still, follow orders or do school tasks. And there was Luca who was so disruptive that the teachers had made special arrangements for him to leave school early early. You can imagine how this made him feel even more excluded until these children started to develop a special bond with Reuben. For example, the puppet sent private email to Alma as saying that it felt really lonely in the class during the night and Alma responded asking whether Reuben needed a friend, her own soft toy, Sunny from home. And Reuben said, "Yes, please. " Slowly, these children became really close to Reuben. It often uh it often sat in Alma's lap in activities that were difficult for her and that made her calmer and more attentive. Uh on a school field trip, Tom the teacher put Luca in charge of Reuben and that was a huge win. Luca often couldn't join these trips because of his behavior, but Reuben made it possible for him to go. Perhaps you can see best how Reuben helped these children through this drawing. It's an illustration of Luca on a classroom whiteboard. It's Reuben and Luca together. It looks kind of like Reuben is lifting Luca up, perhaps making him feel happier, lighter. And for me as a researcher, I really love this picture because I think it is the seven-year-old who was able through this drawing to best crystallize for us what development is and what imagination can do if adults take it seriously. Now, it would have been easy to write off children like Luca Viola or Alma and say that the classroom just isn't a place for them. But these stories show us how adult child play can start changing these systems from the inside. But and this is my strongest message for you today. The value of adult child joint play needs to be better recognized in early learning and teachers who play need to be supported and trusted by their school systems. If this happens then play worlds can start say change say start help us imagine and build better futures with our children futures where everyone could have an important role to play. It is through these roles and those relationships that our most excluded students can find their rightful place and we all benefit. And this can happen again and again if imaginative play is given the place it deserves. Thank you. — Thank you so much Anna. Our final speaker is a 14-year-old origami innovator and a student right here in New York City. He recently earned the top prize at the 2025 Thermoffisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge and he is here today to tell us all about it. Please give a huge round of applause to Miles Woo. I love origami. I love the way I can transform a simple piece of paper into almost anything like a wheelbug, my grandparents, or even a neuron cell. I'm 14 years old. I live in New York City and I'm in nth grade, so I'm usually busy with homework or after school activities, but in my free time, I really enjoy doing origami. Origami is fun, but playing with paper has also shown me that origami has the power to stretch my creativity, help others, and even lead to new discoveries. And today, I'd like to share one small discovery that I made and how I got there. So, I started folding origami over seven years ago, making ornaments for my family's tiny Christmas tree, and getting in trouble in class for turning my worksheets into ninja stars and paper claws. As you can imagine, my teachers were less than overjoyed, but I told them I was making academic weapons. Over time, I began folding more complex origami and even designing my own models. But no matter what, I'm always folding. Give me any scrap of paper and I'll challenge myself to turn it into something. For example, if I'm waiting in line at Trader Joe's, I might turn a sample cup into a crane. or even a super long CVS receipt into a centipede or even the New York Times into a lizard. And it's this process of turning nothing into something that sparks my imagination and draws me to origami. I've also found that origami has the power to help others. During the pandemic, 8-year-old me wrote cards and mailed origami birds to seniors at my local nursing home to cheer them up during quarantine. And more recently, I've been folding even more origami birds. Two years ago, I folded some origami pigeons. By some, I mean 200 of them. If you couldn't tell, pigeons are my favorite birds. And then the following year, I folded sparrows. Another bird that's overlooked, but that I personally love. and I folded a hundred of them and sold them alongside the pigeons uh to raise over $4,000 to donate to my local soup kitchen as well as a nonprofit that rehabilitates injured and orphaned birds in New York City. And so through this project, I was able to see the power of the most humble material, a simple piece of paper to really help my community. More recently, I've been interested in the intersection of origami and science and engineering. I think it started in middle school when I began going down rabbit holes to see how or scientists and researchers and engineers were using origami folds, for example, in space or even to help sick people. But one fold interested me in particular, and this was the mirror or fold. It was invented in the 1970s by Corome, a Japanese astrophysicist. It's a tessillation, which means it's a repeating pattern of parallelograms. And the way these parallelograms are arranged, they're able to fold down to an extremely compact size in one smooth motion. And this makes mirror or an efficient deployable structure that's even been used to fold a solar array that was sent into space. And last year I was also reading the news about natural disasters like Hurricane Helen and I saw so many people displaced and it made me wonder if Mirror Ori could be used to improve emergency deployable shelters by making them stronger and lighter. And so for my eighth grade science fair project, I decided to study Mirror Ori and how I could optimize it strength to weight ratio. I started out by designing 18 different folding patterns. These had different heights, widths, and angles of the parallelograms in the pattern. I tested each of these patterns across three different paper weights. And each of those variations twice for a total of 108 mirror ori that I folded and tested. And for each of these mirror ori, I wanted to see not only how much weight they could hold, but also how many times their own weight they could hold. And so for two months, I transformed my family's small New York City apartment into my testing lab with Mirror AI all over the place. When I was first starting out, I grabbed basically every heavy book and item and I stacked them on top of the mirror or I quickly realized I didn't actually have enough weights to accurately test the models. And so I asked my parents to buy some really heavy exercise weights. 250 hours later and after a lot of heavy lifting, I found that the mirror A or with the smallest and least acutely angled panels made out of the lightest paper had the greatest strength to weight ratio. The strongest pattern held almost 200 lb and another lighter version held more than 10,000 times its own weight. I found that the stronger patterns were more compact and they also created trustlike structures that were able to distribute pressure evenly. It's amazing that something can be so strong and yet so lightweight at the same time. And it's exciting to think about what potential applications a fold like this could have, maybe even helping to imagine a better emergency shelter one day. And so this work that I did by myself at home, it led to me receiving the top prize at National STEM competition last year. And As you can see, I was really shocked to receive such a big prize for simply playing with paper. And so, in the future, I definitely want to keep exploring and learning, but most of all to keep playing with origami so I can continue to discover all the possibilities a single piece of paper can hold. THANK YOU. GREAT JOB. Give another big round of applause for Miles Rules. — What an inspiration. Oh my gosh. Wow. Um, can you believe it? We have come to the end of this day. Thank you all so much. Everyone who is watching on the live stream, all of you incredible people here in person. Thank you to the incredible TED team, everyone who you can see, and everyone who is hiding behind the curtains making this run so smoothly. Thank you to the LEGO Group and the LEGO Foundation for this partnership. And thank you to the concept of play, which makes everything more fun. Thank you. Thank you. Let's give them all a big round of applause. — Okay, if you are watching on the live stream, thank you for watching. Thank you for joining us. I love you. Goodbye.