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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's

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Speaker 1: Saturday Fault episode coming at you. Pretend Play Part four.

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Speaker 1: It's that simple. This was part four of five and

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Speaker 1: it originally published one one, twenty twenty five. Let's have it.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today we returned the

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Speaker 3: fourth installment in our discussion of pretend play, play that

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Speaker 3: involves non literal action and understanding. So when I pretend

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Speaker 3: my fingers are worms crawling up the side of the couch,

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Speaker 3: that's going on in our house this week, by the way,

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Speaker 3: fingers are worms. Or when I pretend a cardboard box

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Speaker 3: becomes the castle grace skull, or when I change the

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Speaker 3: diaper on a stuffed velociraptor, or if I go on

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Speaker 3: adventures in the backyard with an imaginary friend. These are

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Speaker 3: all forms of pretend play play that takes place within

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Speaker 3: a pretend frame and treats anything in the world or

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Speaker 3: in the situation as other than what it literally is. Now,

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Speaker 3: if you haven't heard the previous parts in this series,

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Speaker 3: I think This is one where we really would recommend

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Speaker 3: listening in order. We're going to be building on some

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Speaker 3: conversations we had in previous episodes today, but in those

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Speaker 3: previous installments to refresh, we talked about ways that researchers

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Speaker 3: define and subdivide pretend play into activities like object substitution.

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Speaker 3: So one of our favorite examples is banana is a telephone.

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Speaker 3: They talk about that a lot in the research enactment

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Speaker 3: play where you Might be. You know, I am cooking

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Speaker 3: dinner in my play Kitchen replica, play where you have

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Speaker 3: my toy Triceratops is cooking dinner in the dollhouse, imaginary companions,

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Speaker 3: and other things. We talked about possible links explored in

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Speaker 3: the research between pretend play and the development of advanced

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Speaker 3: cognitive skills like symbolic understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and theory of mind,

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Speaker 3: addressing the question of whether pretending might help children develop

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Speaker 3: some of those important faculties, or at least whether pretending

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Speaker 3: in those faculties might draw on the same underlying neural structures.

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Speaker 3: In Part two, we talked in more depth about research

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Speaker 3: on imaginary friends and imaginary companions, how often they manifest

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Speaker 3: within and across different cultures, what forms they take, what

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Speaker 3: children believe they know, and things like that. In the

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Speaker 3: most recent episode, we looked more at the question of

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Speaker 3: how adult culture influences pretend play among children, noting that

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Speaker 3: while pretending does appear to be basically universal, there is

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Speaker 3: pretty wide variation in how much children play pretend and

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Speaker 3: in the themes of the pretend play in some particular cases,

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Speaker 3: in the framing of whether pretend entities are understood as

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Speaker 3: real in some important way or not. And then last

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Speaker 3: time we also examined the fascinating phenomenon of paracosms, essentially

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Speaker 3: extending the concept of an imaginary friend to where it

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Speaker 3: is not only a single character or playmate, but an

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Speaker 3: entire imaginary world, maybe with its own geography, culture, populations,

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Speaker 3: and rules. And we discussed links between a childhood tendency

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Speaker 3: to generate paracosms and things like creativity in later life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and I have a paracosm update here. Oh really, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because after we'd record this, I realized, well, my child

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Speaker 1: is twelve and almost thirteen, which places them toward the

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Speaker 1: end of what is broadly considered the paracosm period for kids.

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Speaker 1: So I asked them the next morning over breakfast. I

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Speaker 1: was like, I know, you had some pretend worlds and

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Speaker 1: or have pretend worlds that you sometimes in Gaine with

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Speaker 1: other friends. Tell me about them, and so they laid

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Speaker 1: it all out for me. They said, there are two

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Speaker 1: pretend worlds, both of them social in nature, that they

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Speaker 1: shared with one particular other friend. So one of these

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Speaker 1: with one friend is essentially an extrapolation of Star Wars.

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Speaker 1: They said. It's different planets set in the Old Republic

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Speaker 1: era on which Jedis have adventures. Okay, which I think

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Speaker 1: that's a pretty good example because it's like, clearly it's

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Speaker 1: built upon the Star Wars universe, but a universe like

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Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe is kind of limitless, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: you can build out other things that draw on the

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Speaker 1: existing Star Wars lore but generate new ideas as well.

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Speaker 1: And then the other one, I think this was earlier,

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Speaker 1: was a really wild take on Pokemon that they had

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Speaker 1: with another friend that was super into Pokemon at the time,

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Speaker 1: and they would describe these epic wars between Pokemon factions

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Speaker 1: and like an e Pikachu. It was really wild and

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Speaker 1: at the time it was like it at times it

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Speaker 1: was a little much. I was like, this is Pikachu's

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Speaker 1: at an ally, guys, what are you doing?

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Speaker 3: Is evil Pikachu already a thing? Or is that that's

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Speaker 3: purely original?

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Speaker 1: I mean, Pikachu's been around long enough. I imagine all

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Speaker 1: variations possible have been drummed off. Pikachu, I'm sure has

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Speaker 1: played a role in various paracosms.

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Speaker 3: I am Pikachu, I contain multitudes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for some reason, these kids didn't like Pikachu. I

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Speaker 1: think they didn't like Pikachu's fame, like Pikachu being the

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Speaker 1: most famous of the Pokemon, but they love Piachu, the

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Speaker 1: Pokemon that evolves into Pikachu. So there you go.

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Speaker 3: Gotta take Pikachu down a pig I guess so well. Obviously,

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Speaker 3: Pretend to Play is a really rich subject where we

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Speaker 3: just keep finding new angles to examine and things to

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Speaker 3: talk about. I don't know exactly how many parts we're

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Speaker 3: going to go to here. This will be part four.

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Speaker 3: We may actually make it to part five in this series.

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Speaker 3: But there was something I wanted to address in today's episode.

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Speaker 3: One reason is that one of the big overviews of

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Speaker 3: Pretend to Play research addressing like the links with other

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Speaker 3: cognitive capacities and stuff like that. One of the big

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Speaker 3: overviews we talked about. It's about ten years old at

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Speaker 3: this point, so I was looking around for some more

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Speaker 3: recent research on pretend to play to see if there

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Speaker 3: are kind of updates to any of the stuff we've

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Speaker 3: already talked about. Obviously there's new stuff coming out all

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Speaker 3: the time. But one thing that caught my attention was

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Speaker 3: when I came across an interesting write up in Nautilus

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Speaker 3: by Elena Rankin from September twenty twenty four, which was

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Speaker 3: reporting on a paper published in the journal Cognitive Development

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Speaker 3: the same year. And that paper was by a pair

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Speaker 3: of researchers named Elena Hoyka who is affiliated with the

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Speaker 3: University of Bristol, and Eloise Prutin, who at the time

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Speaker 3: I believe was a trainee clinical psychologist at Oxford. And

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Speaker 3: this paper is called the Early Pretending Survey or EPs,

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Speaker 3: A Reliable Parent Report Measure of pretense type development for

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Speaker 3: four to forty seven month olds. Now, we've already talked

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Speaker 3: about a few different kinds of pretend play and how

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Speaker 3: they don't all emerge at once, but rather come online

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Speaker 3: at different times as a child grows up. As the

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Speaker 3: children develop different mental and physical capabilities. Something interesting that

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Speaker 3: this twenty twenty four paper did was get really granular

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Speaker 3: in that specific regard breaking pretend play down into lots

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Speaker 3: of different categories, in fact, into nineteen different categories of activity.

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Speaker 3: And then they did a large survey of the parents

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Speaker 3: of about nine hundred kids between the ages of four

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Speaker 3: months old to forty seven months, which is just shy

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Speaker 3: four years old, to try to get fine detail on

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Speaker 3: when parents observed all these different types of pretend play

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Speaker 3: first manifesting. Now you might think nineteen different types of pretending,

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Speaker 3: like how do you get to that? Like beyond the

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Speaker 3: banana phone, I don't know what else is there? You

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Speaker 3: gotta imagine andary friends, banana phone, I'm a lion. What's left?

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Speaker 3: And it's true that some of these categories they explore

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Speaker 3: are kind of overlapping or are kind of subdivisions of

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Speaker 3: activities we've already talked about into two different subtypes, but

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Speaker 3: I still thought it was really interesting, and this brought

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Speaker 3: up stuff that I had actually observed with my own

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Speaker 3: daughter but had sort of forgotten about in our earlier

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Speaker 3: discussions of pretend play from this series. So I want

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Speaker 3: to look through this list of play activities from the paper.

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, this will be fun because yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think we can compare notes in multiple ways here.

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Speaker 3: So we're going to start with some we haven't really

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Speaker 3: talked about before. One category is pretending to be in

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Speaker 3: another state. Now that's not a state, like a geographic region,

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Speaker 3: a state, another state of being, like pretending to be asleep,

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Speaker 3: or pretending to sneeze when you don't actually have to sneeze.

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Speaker 3: Somewhat similar but a little bit different, is pretending to cry.

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Speaker 1: Okay, there are different dynamics to all of these, because

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Speaker 1: you know, you can pretend to cry and work yourself

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Speaker 1: up to a real cry. Oh sure, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you can do that with a sneeze. Maybe there's

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Speaker 1: been research into this. Likewise, you can pretend to be

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Speaker 1: asleep and fall asleep.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, okay, here's another one. Pretending to do everyday

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Speaker 3: adult activities like cooking or driving. We could think of

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Speaker 3: this as a kind of enactment play. So we've already

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Speaker 3: talked about versions of this. Pretending that this is apparently

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Speaker 3: really big. It sounds very specific, but it's a very

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Speaker 3: very commonly observed thing. Pretending empty vessels are full, so

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Speaker 3: drinking from an actually empty cup or pouring One example

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Speaker 3: I thought of is pouring invisible cereal out of an

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Speaker 3: empty cereal box into a bowl. And this one can

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Speaker 3: actually split up into three subtypes. So there is pretending

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Speaker 3: empty vessels are full in relation to serving the self,

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Speaker 3: like I drink from a literally cup. Then there is

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Speaker 3: pretending empty vessels are full. On another, I feed my

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Speaker 3: doll from this empty cup, or I try to make

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Speaker 3: Dad drink from the empty cup, and then finally pretending

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Speaker 3: empty vessels are full on many others. So I'm feeding

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Speaker 3: many different toys or people in this manner.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, looking back that I remember doing a lot of

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Speaker 1: sampling of various food, imaginary food, or drinks that my

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Speaker 1: kid had prepared you.

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Speaker 3: Another one is what the authors call gesturing an object.

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Speaker 3: This would not be external object substitution, but instead things

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Speaker 3: like my finger is a toothbrush, essentially mentally extending or

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Speaker 3: substituting parts of the body as a pretend external object.

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Speaker 1: Okay, finger guns wouldnt imagine.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, then after that you got one that will

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Speaker 3: be more familiar to us, pretending to be an object

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Speaker 3: like I am a tree. There is pretend what.

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Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, I'm just imagining that pretend gang.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very Yeah, I don't know, it's more complex

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Speaker 3: than you might think.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for the quiet kids.

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Speaker 3: There's pretending to be an animal, like I am a

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Speaker 3: bunny rabbit.

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Speaker 1: This was huge with my child until really very recently.

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Speaker 1: There would often be requested to play zookeeper at playgrounds

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Speaker 1: where I would have to be a zookeeper doing a

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Speaker 1: British accent, like a like an Attenborough type accent, describing

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Speaker 1: nature documentary style what the animal is doing while they

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Speaker 1: did animal pretend play.

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Speaker 3: That's beautiful. There is classical object substitution, which we've already

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Speaker 3: talked about, but they actually break this down into multiple categories.

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Speaker 3: There is object substitution with non descript props, so this

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Speaker 3: might be when the literal prop is somewhat generic and versatile,

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Speaker 3: like toy block is a phone. And then there is

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Speaker 3: object substitution with more specific props that are very different

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Speaker 3: from the thing they're mimicking, so like toy car is

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Speaker 3: a telephone?

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Speaker 1: Interesting, all right, and so this is casual optic substitution,

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Speaker 1: So imagine this is different. This differs from something that

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Speaker 1: I saw later on with my child, where they would

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Speaker 1: craft a pretend telephone or a pretend computer, or a

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Speaker 1: pretend Nintendo switch out of like cardboard and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: That seems more specific than what we're talking about here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that does seem like a different thing. If you're

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Speaker 3: building it, that's like a like the play, if the

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Speaker 3: play is centered around the fabrication process.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I guess you get into the example

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Speaker 1: that I already brought up about the lightsabers building a

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Speaker 1: lightsaber help.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay. After this, there is pretending to be another person.

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Speaker 3: This would be a really existing person like I am

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Speaker 3: Grandpa or I am Mom.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I don't think we did that one.

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Speaker 3: And then there are further distinctions about the social context.

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Speaker 3: There's pretending alone versus pretending with somebody else. And I

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Speaker 3: guess those two categories could apply to any of the

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Speaker 3: above categories you mentioned. Beyond this, there is what the

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Speaker 3: authors call socio dramatic pretending. This means creating not just

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Speaker 3: a single action in pretense, but creating a more elaborate

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Speaker 3: pretend story. So maybe not just like I am Grandpa,

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Speaker 3: I pour tea like Grandpa. Instead it's like I am

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Speaker 3: Grandpa and I want to go to the store to

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Speaker 3: buy candy for my doggie. But on the way to

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Speaker 3: the store, I get attacked by pirates and my doggie

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Speaker 3: gets hurt and I have to put a band aid

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Speaker 3: on my doggie so he can feel better, and then

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Speaker 3: we all go swimming in the lake, and you know,

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Speaker 3: so forth after that. There is pretending to be fantasy

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Speaker 3: characters already existing in culture, like you know, I am

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Speaker 3: Princess Leiah, I am Batman, I am Santa Claus, that

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Speaker 3: sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: And obviously we encourage that across the board, yes, you know,

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Speaker 1: and for a children and adults, you know, certainly get

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Speaker 1: into that dressing up as these various characters. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of us very very

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Speaker 1: much encouraged this sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: There is, of course, pretending to have an imaginary friend

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Speaker 3: or companion. We've already talked about that a lot. There is.

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Speaker 3: I thought this was an interesting distinction. There is pretending

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Speaker 3: to do real activities that are not available to most

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Speaker 3: people most of the time, So real activities, but not

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Speaker 3: everyday activities. And examples of this might be I am

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Speaker 3: a rocket ship commander. That's a real thing, but most

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Speaker 3: people don't do that I am a pop singer and

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Speaker 3: I'm on TV in front of millions. That's a real thing.

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Speaker 3: Most people don't do it, So that's distinct from both

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Speaker 3: fantasy activities and from everyday activities like driving or cooking.

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Speaker 1: One of my kids friends would pretend to open their

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Speaker 1: own bank.

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Speaker 3: That's sort of in the category.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they'd make their own money. I think I still

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Speaker 1: have some of their pretend bills around here somewhere in

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Speaker 1: one of my books. It's a bookmark called them Darryl Bucks.

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Speaker 3: That is curious. And then finally you've got acting out

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Speaker 3: completely made up fantasy scenarios. I ride a dragon through

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Speaker 3: the sky and I use magic to transform people into

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Speaker 3: cats and that sort of thing.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So I really liked this granular attention to detail and

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Speaker 3: the different ways that pretend to play can manifest. And

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Speaker 3: this paper actually developed a new tool for asking participant

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Speaker 3: parents questions to track the emergence of these different pretend activities.

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Speaker 3: So the tool the authors developed was called the Early

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Speaker 3: Pretending Survey or EPs, and the authors tested the EPs

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Speaker 3: for internal reliability, stability over time, inter observer agreement, and

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Speaker 3: they found it performed pretty well, which they leveraged to

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Speaker 3: argue that the EPs could be quote useful for researchers

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Speaker 3: to better understand how pretending relates to other areas of development, eg.

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Speaker 3: Cognition and language. Now, I can imagine we've already talked

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Speaker 3: in some ways about difficulties with relying on parental reports

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Speaker 3: for understanding childhood play, and those things are here as well.

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Speaker 3: But I can imagine that one advantage of using parental

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Speaker 3: reports in a survey as opposed to directly observing children

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Speaker 3: play in a lab is that the lab setting for

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Speaker 3: one thing might change what the children do, and so

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Speaker 3: relying on parental observations gives you access to how children

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Speaker 3: behave in settings that are normal for them, you know,

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Speaker 3: like what they do at home or at school, and

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Speaker 3: in places where they normally are. I think we can

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Speaker 3: all relate to the fact that when we go to

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Speaker 3: an unfamiliar and maybe even uncomfortable place, we act different.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And on top of that, this reminds me

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Speaker 1: of an example from some studies we're talking about with

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Speaker 1: imaginary friends, where it was pointed out that a you

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Speaker 1: want to talk to the kid and the adult, but

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Speaker 1: when you ask the kid about their imaginary friends, they

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Speaker 1: might just create one right there on the spot.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So that's a great example where it's also good to

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Speaker 1: chat with the parent and they'll be like, I've never

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Speaker 1: heard of mister Bongoes. I think they made mister Bongoes

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Speaker 1: up like literally just now for fun.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because you brought up the idea.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you let mister bong goes.

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Speaker 3: In, right. So the laboratory observation setting might be a

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Speaker 3: conjuring Captain Howdy kind of thing with the Ouiji aboard.

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Speaker 3: Another big thing is that obviously having to have researchers

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Speaker 3: directly observe children playing over time in a laboratory setting

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Speaker 3: or any kind of whatever the controlled setting is is

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Speaker 3: just cumbersome, you know, It's like time consuming, and so

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Speaker 3: a survey format allows you to gather much larger sample

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Speaker 3: sizes than direct observation in a controlled setting. It's because

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Speaker 3: that the latter is costly and time consuming. So the

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Speaker 3: author has administered this survey to parents primarily in the US, UK, Canada,

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Speaker 3: and Australia in across the years twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 3: and I was interested what did they find. I can't

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Speaker 3: discuss everything mentioned in the paper, but some of the

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Speaker 3: highlights we've been talking. Here's one thing that's kind of

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Speaker 3: surprising based on our previous discussion. We've been talking about

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Speaker 3: a prevailing belief that object substitution like you know, banana

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Speaker 3: is a phone, is usually one of the first types

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Speaker 3: of pretend play observed, most often emerging at one and

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Speaker 3: a half years of age or so. But this survey found,

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Speaker 3: and this agrees with some previous research, that actually there

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Speaker 3: are some other types of pretend play that come even earlier,

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Speaker 3: come before object substitution, and these would be some of

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Speaker 3: the more specific ones that we were talking about at

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Speaker 3: the beginning of the list. The list I read earlier

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Speaker 3: was roughly roughly in the chronological order of observance. So

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Speaker 3: remember the empty pretend play. The EPs found that this

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Speaker 3: happens early, with like half of kids doing it by

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Speaker 3: around thirteen months of age, and then the other thing

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Speaker 3: before object substitution is by around fifteen months. Half of

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Speaker 3: kids have shown some signs of pretending with their own body,

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Speaker 3: such as pretending to be in a different state, like

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Speaker 3: pretending to sleep or pretending to sneeze, or pretending to

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Speaker 3: be something else with their body like I am a tiger,

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Speaker 3: I'm growling, roar, and then it's by seventeen months of

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Speaker 3: age or so that half had shown signs of object substitution.

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Speaker 3: So this does agree in part with the schedule we've

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Speaker 3: been talking about before, where object substitution shows up on

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Speaker 3: average about one and a half years old, but finds

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Speaker 3: that some types of pretend play tend to happen even

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Speaker 3: earlier than object substitution. And though I didn't really think

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Speaker 3: much about either of these earlier examples, now that I

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Speaker 3: reflect on it, I have to yes myself, because you know,

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Speaker 3: my memory is involved, and who knows what I'm being

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Speaker 3: primed to misremember here, But I think this squares exactly

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Speaker 3: with my own experience as the parent of a toddler,

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Speaker 3: Like I have a two year old right now, and

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Speaker 3: my memory may be gein correct, but I think before

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Speaker 3: my daughter ever pretended one object was another, she would

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Speaker 3: pretend to sneeze and pretend to be asleep, and also

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Speaker 3: pretend to eat or drink things that were not really there,

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Speaker 3: and she thought it was hilarious with most of these.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember how this shook out with my

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Speaker 1: own kit, but in general this does seem accurate.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, from here, the story based socio dramatic play

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Speaker 3: that we were talking about that starts to happen more

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Speaker 3: when kids are around two years old usually, and then

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Speaker 3: complex make believe fantasy concepts tend to take hold when

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Speaker 3: children are around three. And of course it may be

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Speaker 3: that these later play types are dependent on the development

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Speaker 3: of language skills, so as children get better at using

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Speaker 3: manipulating language, that also sort of helps them construct these

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Speaker 3: abstract or counterfactual scenarios. Now, what about other general findings

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Speaker 3: in this paper. Well, one thing is that within the

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Speaker 3: survey range like four months to four years, kids pretending

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Speaker 3: scores steadily increased with age, which actually made me wonder, okay,

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Speaker 3: in this early period is just basically going straight up,

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Speaker 3: when do we actually see reductions in pretend play? That

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Speaker 3: actually came up in the Nautilus article that I shouted

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Speaker 3: out for pointing me to this research, because the author

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Speaker 3: of that Nautilus article cited some commentary by a researcher

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Speaker 3: named Sandra Russ at Case Western and Russ says that

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Speaker 3: it is most often around the age of nine or

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Speaker 3: ten that children start to kind of relinquish their pretend play.

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Speaker 3: But of course that can vary, and you could argue

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Speaker 3: with most people, it never completely goes away. Some people

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Speaker 3: continue to show similar imag imaginative behavior into adulthood, even

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Speaker 3: if it's not exactly play like when they were a child.

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Speaker 3: They might have creative hobbies like writing or art or acting,

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Speaker 3: which could be in some ways analogous. And of course

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Speaker 3: some kids continue pretending into older ages. I think we

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Speaker 3: talked about how, you know, with kids that start building paracosms,

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Speaker 3: those it's I think fairly common for those to continue

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Speaker 3: from ages like eight to twelve or so.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like twelve or thirteen, Yeah, somewhere in that range. So,

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Speaker 1: and I guess that makes sense if you're looking at

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Speaker 1: this as like a general progression of one's use of imagination,

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Speaker 1: that that would continue a little bit, a little bit

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Speaker 1: further into your development.

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Speaker 3: Any other broad differences within the children in the survey,

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Speaker 3: One was that girls, on average had a somewhat higher

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Speaker 3: EPs score than boys, though it was a small difference.

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Speaker 3: The gender difference was not huge, but it was statistically significant.

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Speaker 3: And also I thought this was interesting. Children of younger

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Speaker 3: parents had higher EPs scores than children of older parents. Now,

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Speaker 3: again these differences are not huge, but that's interesting. Why

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Speaker 3: would pretending be happening a little bit more, a little

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Speaker 3: bit earlier in girls and in children of younger parents.

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Speaker 3: In both cases, it's not known with high confidence what

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Speaker 3: explains it, but the authors offer a couple of informed

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Speaker 3: guesses in their discussion section as to the gender distinction.

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Speaker 3: They relate this possibly to the fact that at both well.

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Speaker 3: First of all, they say that this sort of correlates

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Speaker 3: to previous findings in other studies that both in the

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Speaker 3: toddler age and in the primary school age, girls have

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Speaker 3: been found to engage in a little bit more fantasy

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Speaker 3: play on average than boys do, and that they're also

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Speaker 3: a little bit more likely to create imaginary companions. They

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Speaker 3: cite several papers to that regard, and so like, what

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Speaker 3: would be the explanation, Well, it's possible, again not known

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Speaker 3: for sure, that this could be related to language skills.

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Speaker 3: In some cases, girls acquire language skills on a slightly

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Speaker 3: accelerated timeline, and it could be that language development is

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Speaker 3: related to pretending. But again the differences are not huge,

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Speaker 3: and it's not known for sure why this would be.

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Speaker 3: Similar question with the thing about younger parents having slightly

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Speaker 3: more pretending happening earlier. The author's right quote perhaps younger

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Speaker 3: parents spend more time pretending with their children, allowing more

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Speaker 3: opportunities for parents to observe or even scaffold pretending. So

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Speaker 3: that could make sense, Like if there's more co pretending

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Speaker 3: between the parent and child happening, that could affect the

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Speaker 3: survey results in multiple ways. It could mean that the

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Speaker 3: child is actually doing more pretending because they're getting more

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Speaker 3: practice with an adult present. Or it could mean that

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Speaker 3: the children are pretending the same amount, but the parents

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Speaker 3: are observing it happen more and thus they're reporting it

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Speaker 3: more on the surveys.

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Speaker 1: But I guess I'm still kind of foggy as to

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Speaker 1: how this would share out between younger and older parents,

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Speaker 1: not just because I was am was and was an

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Speaker 1: older parent, but but I'm just wondering, like, what's what

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Speaker 1: would be the broad difference there.

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Speaker 3: That's a good question. I don't actually know. They didn't

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Speaker 3: mention it this part, but maybe maybe there was somewhere

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Speaker 3: in there that got lost for me. But they could

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Speaker 3: have some data indicating that, on average, younger parents spend

436
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 3: more time pretending with kids, But I don't know.

437
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess the most obvious

438
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: possible explanation for that. One might think I would be

439
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 1: like work responsibilities, but I can just you know, just

440
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: shooting from the hip here, I can think of various

441
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 1: scenarios in which younger parents would be working more, but

442
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:48,640
Speaker 1: then also examples where maybe younger parents have more free

443
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: time to spend with the kid. Like, I don't know

444
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: it just I guess. I'm I'm not sure how the

445
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 1: generalities that they're dealing with here would really pan out,

446
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm sure it's based on based on

447
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:01,880
Speaker 1: some findings and some statistical information.

448
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's the slight correlation having to do with

449
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 3: the age of the parents is just what they observed

450
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,640
Speaker 3: in the sample. I guess the part about that having

451
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 3: anything to do with parents spending time pretending with the

452
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:19,119
Speaker 3: kids is just an informed gus, so who knows what

453
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:20,119
Speaker 3: the real reason was.

454
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: I guess the other possibility would be older parents have

455
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: already had additional children, and then therefore there's less attention

456
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 1: to go around.

457
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 3: Possibly. So, as I said, none of these differences were huge,

458
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 3: and I guess we don't really know for sure why

459
00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 3: they manifest in this fairly large sample. But one thing

460
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting about the study was just coming

461
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 3: back to the kind of granular detail tracking these different

462
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:50,639
Speaker 3: types of play emergence with a finer attention to the

463
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 3: variations in the style of play.

464
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 1: Like.

465
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 3: I don't think otherwise I would have noticed that it's

466
00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 3: so common to pretend to cup has something in it

467
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 3: like that that feels like such a specific thing. But

468
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 3: it's interesting that it's observed so often they had to

469
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:09,439
Speaker 3: give it its own category. I mean, you could just

470
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 3: think of that as a kind of like invisible object play,

471
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 3: but I guess it's so common that it is different

472
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 3: than like I'm using an invisible toothbrush. Like it seems like,

473
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:22,680
Speaker 3: you know, tons of kids. Maybe maybe most kids are

474
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 3: pretending there's something in a cup when there actually isn't.

475
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 1: I'll occasionally do that as a grown up, pretended there's

476
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:32,479
Speaker 1: something in a cup and pretend to drink it, mainly

477
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: if I'm at some sort of like a social function,

478
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and the cup is not clear to

479
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:41,479
Speaker 1: be to be clear, the cup has to cannot be

480
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 1: made of translucent plastic. But you know, I've consumed everything

481
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: in the cup, and I want to continue to have

482
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:51,120
Speaker 1: like the gesture of drinking it. Yeah, to do something

483
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:54,239
Speaker 1: with my hand. I may engage in that level of

484
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 1: play slash deception.

485
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 3: Sipping from a cup is part of the rhythm of

486
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 3: conversation party.

487
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 1: And if you're out of a beverage, I mean you're

488
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: out of options, right, Yeah, so sometimes you got to pretend.

489
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 3: Well, So anyway, I thought that was an interesting study,

490
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 3: but I was thinking more about the fact that they say,

491
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 3: you know, most often the real height of childhood style

492
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 3: pretend to play. It starts to fade around the age

493
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 3: of nine or ten. However, of course, as we know,

494
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 3: different types of pretending can go on for a lifetime,

495
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 3: and I think that's something that's related to what you

496
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about today, isn't it, Rob Yeah.

497
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got interested in the angle of pretend play

498
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: and play and creativity in adults and other ages in

499
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: addition to childhood and early adolescents. And part of this

500
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: was my wife's suggestion. She was like, well, that would

501
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: be an interesting aga. So it's like, yeah, yeah, that

502
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: sounds that sounds sounds fascinating, and so I'm not really

503
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 1: going to get into a lot of like specific studies.

504
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: Maybe that'll be something I can get into in the

505
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: next episode. But I ended up looking at material that's

506
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: really tackling the idea of pretend play and adults more broadly.

507
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 1: So obviously we've been discussing the idea of pretend play

508
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: as a manifestation of developing creativity, and I think that's

509
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: perfectly valid. That's often how it is understood. Childhood psychologist

510
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: lev Vygotsky, who lived eighteen ninety six through nineteen thirty four,

511
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: outlined a three step creativity development process creative imagination in childhood,

512
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: imagination and thought coming together in adolescence, and finally the

513
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: individual enters into adulthood quote where experience creativity is directed

514
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 1: and used with purpose. I was reading about this in

515
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: an article by at All twenty twenties, playing with Creativity

516
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: across the life span. This was in tech trends linking

517
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 1: research and practice to improve learning. Now, as you can

518
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: always already imagine, we'll get into some of the ideas

519
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 1: around this. This is kind of, I think, from our

520
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: modern perspective, limiting understanding of creativity, the idea that it's like, okay,

521
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 1: being creative just for the sake of fun. That was

522
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: all right when you were younger, But now you're a

523
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 1: grown up, how is it going to produce funds. How

524
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 1: are you going to make money off of that? Or

525
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 1: change the world for the better and so forth, Your

526
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: creativity has to be put to work. That horse isn't

527
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:38,360
Speaker 1: wild anymore. You need to strap it to the cart.

528
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 3: Oh so that is the meaning of used with purpose

529
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:42,000
Speaker 3: here in this quote.

530
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Yeah, he positive that childhood fantasy and imagination

531
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 1: were essentially catalysts for adult creativity, which would be which

532
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 1: was seen as more purposeful, you know, like, and you know,

533
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: I think there are some valid arguments for that as well.

534
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously when we become adults and we engage

535
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: in cultures and a society that often puts an emphasis

536
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: again on making money, and also legitimately like taking things

537
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: you're good at and have a passion for, and finding

538
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 1: professions and callings in life that line up with those.

539
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 3: You know, it's understandable just solving practical problems that may

540
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 3: or may not have a strong economic component.

541
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: But yeah, this purpose aspect is interesting and something discussed

542
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 1: at length in that paper I just cited. Apparently some

543
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 1: definitions of creativity, stress, usefulness and effectiveness is criteria for creativity,

544
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: tying into Vagotsky's take on adult creativity. Other models call

545
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: for dual aspects of novelty or originality and usefulness or effectiveness.

546
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: And you know, when you start talking about effectiveness and

547
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 1: usefulness as well, especially more recent understandings of it, there's

548
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 1: more room for nuance there.

549
00:31:57,640 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Okay, So I guess this is going to

550
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 3: the question of how do we actually define creativity. If

551
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 3: we're trying to study it scientifically, you need a very

552
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 3: clear and strict definition. And instead, it's one of those

553
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:11,280
Speaker 3: things that we kind of we feel it out, we

554
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 3: know what we see it. Some activity is just seems

555
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 3: creative or doesn't. Like, writing a story is creative, But

556
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 3: is writing a memo for work creative?

557
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: Not? Usually it could be usually that's your creativity challenge

558
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: for the day, make it a creative exercise.

559
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess there's something. Yeah, Like, these definitions

560
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 3: mentioned something about novelty. So creativity is something that's kind

561
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 3: of different or unexpected. It's not just kind of going

562
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 3: through the motions or engaging in habits. It's doing something

563
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 3: different and novel. But the other half of this in

564
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 3: these definitions is kind of stressing that it's not just

565
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 3: novelty in a kind of random sense. It's novelty that

566
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 3: is useful or effective in some way. It does something right.

567
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting when we get into like what

568
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: does that mean for it to do something right, to

569
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: do something useful. As discussed in this paper, childhood psychologist

570
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 1: doctor Sandra Russ proposes a slightly different definition for creativity

571
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: and with a different emphasis on what some of the

572
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 1: key aspects mean. So she defines it as it needs

573
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 1: to be novel, it needs to be effective, and it

574
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: needs to be whole. So she argues that especially with children,

575
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: we can't put much weight on the importance or usefulness

576
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: of any of this, right, like how useful is a

577
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: child's paracosm, how useful is a child's imaginary friend. But

578
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: the big thing that she stresses is play is the

579
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: product it is. It is an output of how they

580
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 1: think and feel. Multiple aspects of a child's being are

581
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:53,360
Speaker 1: involved in the act of play, and I believe that

582
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: is what's meant by wholeness. Here the idea that like that, yes,

583
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: with an act of creativity is not just this like

584
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: leakage of energy from your psyche, you know. And I

585
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: think this holds true for children and adults as well

586
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 1: as Guss like when when you're engaging in created creative

587
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: output like that is it's like the output of your being.

588
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: You know, it is like not to get too you know,

589
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: wax too poetic about it, but I mean, it's like

590
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,720
Speaker 1: a light shining out of your soul and your your mind.

591
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: It's it's not just this shadow that happens to be

592
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 1: cast by who you are.

593
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,719
Speaker 3: Well that is beautifully put. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I

594
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 3: think you're right. Sorry, but sorry, my mind was just

595
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 3: divided into different places because I just realized while you're

596
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 3: saying that also that you were citing that the work

597
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 3: of Sandra Russ, who was the same person that I

598
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 3: just cited in my section about about most pretend to

599
00:34:49,080 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 3: play tending to fade around the age of nine or

600
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 3: ten years old.

601
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:53,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe. I believe she's a pretty big name

602
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:53,960
Speaker 1: in this field.

603
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, but of course with a lot of variation. But

604
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 3: that's an interesting criterion that I don't think I would

605
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 3: have gotten this, this concept of wholeness.

606
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you know, and looking around, I'm not

607
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: sure how often she uses the term wholeness, but they

608
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: reference whole. They they had kind of some wholeness up

609
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,719
Speaker 1: as being an aspect of her definition. Okay, and I

610
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: do think that that that plays out with what she's

611
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:23,440
Speaker 1: stressing here. But you know, even in adults, though, the

612
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 1: way we think of usefulness or to you know, to

613
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: use Russ's model usefulness or effectiveness, Uh, it varies from

614
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: field to field. In this paper, they broadly address different

615
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: forms of creativity, invoking the four C creative creativity model

616
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 1: by James C. Kaufman and doctor Ronald Baghetto. Have we

617
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: talked about this before? I don't know.

618
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 3: We've been doing the show a long time, so I

619
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 3: can't always recall.

620
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:49,360
Speaker 1: But yeah, I forget whole episodes sometimes.

621
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 3: But I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

622
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:57,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels fresh to my mind. So basically, the

623
00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:01,759
Speaker 1: way the four C creativity model plays out is that

624
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,160
Speaker 1: you have four different modes of creativity. First of all,

625
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 1: you have big C creativity. This is landmark work that

626
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 1: changes a field or changes the world. So like big

627
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: C creativity would be like I have invented the steam engine,

628
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:21,360
Speaker 1: or I have I present you with a new religious

629
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 1: model and spiritual model for your way of life, something

630
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: like that.

631
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,720
Speaker 3: Huge impact general theory of relativity or something.

632
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 4: Yeah.

633
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, Then you have little C creativity. And this is

634
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: still this is work that has strong interpersonal value. It's additive,

635
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:41,320
Speaker 1: it's cumulative. And we can think of various examples of

636
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:43,800
Speaker 1: this as well. I mean, I think, like a great book,

637
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: but not a book so great that it changes the

638
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: world might fit under little C creativity if I'm understanding

639
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: the concept correctly, or I would say not even they

640
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 1: don't even think about greatness. But a book you like

641
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: has you know, strong personal value, and you know you

642
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 1: share that with others and so forth. Then you have

643
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: pro C creativity. This is not game changing, but it's

644
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: effective and beneficial within a given field. So you know,

645
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:15,959
Speaker 1: a new means of doing something, some new innovation within

646
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: a given field.

647
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 3: Okay, and then you have many.

648
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 1: C creativity, And this is an interpersonal creativity that is

649
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,880
Speaker 1: a part of the learning process. So my understanding on this,

650
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: like to draw an example from like our daily work

651
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: pretty much is like sometimes when we run across a

652
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 1: new concept, we kind of have to make sense of

653
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: it ourselves, and we'll sort of turn to some sort

654
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: of a personal novel metaphor for how it works, you know,

655
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: like compare it to a Santo movie or what have you.

656
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: You know, So we're engaging in many C creativity according

657
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 1: to this model here, you know, it's it's not going

658
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:53,800
Speaker 1: to change the world. It's not trying to change the world.

659
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: It's not really innovating anything. But it's helping us in

660
00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: a learning process, Like it does have value within the

661
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 1: way that our mind is working. It's helping us roll

662
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 1: around various concepts and so forth.

663
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:07,320
Speaker 3: The kind of creativity we engage in, we all engage

664
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,720
Speaker 3: in basically every day, coming up with analogies or ways

665
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:12,800
Speaker 3: of thinking about or explaining things.

666
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, but one an important thing they stress is that

667
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 1: that that any kind of creativity is going to start

668
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: out novel and personal. So you know, a mini creates

669
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: many C creativity project could become a pro C, could

670
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 1: become a little C, could become a big C, and

671
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: so forth. So I think it's a pretty useful idea

672
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 1: for and certainly gives it a little more nuanced to

673
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:42,239
Speaker 1: the idea of like what is the enterprise of creativity

674
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: and what role does it play? So applying all of

675
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,720
Speaker 1: this to adults, the idea that Russ and the paper

676
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:51,800
Speaker 1: proposes here is that, yes, childhood creativity has an influence

677
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,399
Speaker 1: on adult creativity, but we can't just think about creativity

678
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 1: in adults, as you know, just just in terms of

679
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 1: its useful wellness, like in the workplace or for a career. Again,

680
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:05,880
Speaker 1: we can't just think of it as strapping that horse

681
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 1: to a cart. Play in particular, they stress for children

682
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 1: and adults allows us to process challenges and emotions while

683
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:17,319
Speaker 1: also supporting other forms of creativity. So again, a mini

684
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: c exercise could transition into a pro se or any

685
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: of the other forms of creativity. You know, to quote

686
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: Lawrence of Arabia, big things have small beginnings.

687
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 3: And I think often this is sort of a cliche

688
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 3: at this point, but how often in history you see

689
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 3: people who do I don't know, make big creative leaps

690
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 3: that are often categorized as the useful sort. You know,

691
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 3: people who make big scientific breakthroughs, or people who you know,

692
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,360
Speaker 3: do great works of art or something are often also

693
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 3: engaged in what we might think of as a lot

694
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 3: of trivial collaborative outside of work play of a creative sort.

695
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 3: You know, they're just sort of in whatever off hours

696
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 3: they have, kind of talking to other people who are

697
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 3: involved in similar pursuits and engaging and engaging in little

698
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 3: kind of lower stakes games with the ideas that they're

699
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 3: manipulating in their major work.

700
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:16,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. And one of the big ideas

701
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: here is that most of us are not going to

702
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: engage in big C creativity. Most of us are not

703
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 1: going to create a new religion, create some sort of

704
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 1: new technology it changes the world. We're not going to,

705
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:32,719
Speaker 1: you know, write the Great American novel or what have you.

706
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:38,240
Speaker 1: But those little C and many C exercises they're still novel,

707
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:41,880
Speaker 1: they're still useful, and they're still whole. So in this

708
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,280
Speaker 1: paper they make several observations about adult play during COVID

709
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:49,879
Speaker 1: nineteen lockdowns, you know, taking us back to that time

710
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: in which you know, we can I think everyone listening

711
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: can probably remember. You know, you had many adults suddenly

712
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 1: dealing with more free time but also expressing themselves through

713
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: play and even process emotions and even trauma through that

714
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 1: play in addition to nurturing joy. You know, So suddenly

715
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:13,120
Speaker 1: people who had the ability to do so, you know,

716
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:15,720
Speaker 1: they might suddenly they're playing more Dudgeons and Dragons than usual,

717
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 1: or they're they're turning back to an old hobby. And yeah,

718
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,240
Speaker 1: part of that is like maybe they had some extra

719
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 1: time they were trapped in their home and so forth.

720
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 1: But additionally, like the creative process, gave them a way

721
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: to work through what they were feeling. So in this

722
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: paper from sin at All, they write the following quote.

723
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: As human beings, we are programmed to use play in

724
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 1: creative expression to connect and work through the difficulties. Creativity

725
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:47,360
Speaker 1: is not just about finding solutions to problems. It is

726
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:51,280
Speaker 1: about expressing emotion and processing change. Now does it involve

727
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:57,280
Speaker 1: pretend play? Coming back to the overarching theme of these episodes? Subjectively,

728
00:41:58,080 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: my argument was yes, you know, I was thinking about

729
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 1: various games. Dungeons and dragons are otherwise various creative endeavors

730
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: one might engage in. But I've also found literature that

731
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: lines up with this too. Oh okay, I was looking

732
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: at a paper this is by Gungku at All published

733
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: in Topoi, an international review of philosophy from two thousand

734
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: and five, titled Pretend Play as a lifespan Activity, and

735
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 1: the authors here argue that pretend play is an adaptive

736
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: human activity of adulthood as well as childhood. They point

737
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:34,120
Speaker 1: out that a lot of the early work in childhood

738
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: psychology creative view in which childhood is playful and fanciful,

739
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 1: while adult adulthood is all logical and productive. We touched

740
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:43,279
Speaker 1: on that already. The idea that okay, you're grown up

741
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: and now put your creativity to work again. Creativity and

742
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:51,279
Speaker 1: adults was seen as is useful almost always in a

743
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: big sea or at least little sea aspiring manner. The

744
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: authors here, though, argue the opposite, that pretend play can

745
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,919
Speaker 1: be found throughout adult life as well, and they point

746
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:04,320
Speaker 1: to adult improv theater as a key example of this. Now, granted,

747
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 1: not everyone engages in improv theater, but it has been

748
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: interesting in recent years to see improv theater and it's

749
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 1: often brought in to say, business spaces and so forth,

750
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: realizing that it is a fun and helpful skill set

751
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:21,800
Speaker 1: to bring into some sort of a work environment.

752
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:26,839
Speaker 3: Hmm yeah, okay, So I was thinking of ways that

753
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:31,800
Speaker 3: pretend play can continue into adulthood, and it made me wonder,

754
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,839
Speaker 3: does something count as pretend play if you were sort

755
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 3: of trying to hide the fact that you're doing it,

756
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:41,879
Speaker 3: if it's just sort of a private game with yourself,

757
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 3: and maybe you're not really thinking of it as pretend

758
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 3: play and you don't necessarily tell other people about it.

759
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 3: But I don't know. What's coming to mind is that

760
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 3: I think probably a lot of adults go about their

761
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 3: business with this model we've talked about before, where they're

762
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:01,800
Speaker 3: kind of seeing themselves as a character in a narrative.

763
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:05,480
Speaker 3: You know, they're not like I am Luke Skywalker, but

764
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:09,960
Speaker 3: they are framing the events of their life in a

765
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 3: kind of in a modified, not very realistic way that

766
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,760
Speaker 3: that paints them as like the hero of an important story.

767
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 3: Does that count as pretend play? I mean it's I

768
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:24,280
Speaker 3: don't I don't know if it's like altering the literal

769
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 3: facts of reality, but it's it's putting their life within

770
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:33,239
Speaker 3: a frame, a frame that is probably not the way

771
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 3: an objective observer would describe what they're doing. Does that

772
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:36,919
Speaker 3: make sense?

773
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 1: Now there's at least a patina of pretend play involved here. Yeah, yeah,

774
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:46,840
Speaker 1: Whereas in an improv class you might literally be pretending

775
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 1: to be a dump truck. Yes, in a way if

776
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 1: that most most non improf adults are not doing, but

777
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:56,200
Speaker 1: very much in line with the kind of pretend to

778
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 1: play a child might engage in.

779
00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And there is some kind of freeing about that,

780
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 3: you know, when you when you watch improv, there's like

781
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 3: a there's a feeling of cutting loose that's very exciting

782
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 3: that you don't see even in a lot of otherwise

783
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 3: creative adults.

784
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 1: Now that this paper does not get into it, But

785
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:17,120
Speaker 1: of course I'm also reminded of various observations about other

786
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 1: forms of acting in which there can be kind of

787
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: a contagious aspect to the part one is playing and

788
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:30,919
Speaker 1: one's own thoughts and actions. So, I mean, I guess

789
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: you especially when adults. I mean, to a certain extent,

790
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 1: when kids pretend play. You know, sometimes animal simulations can

791
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:39,359
Speaker 1: get a little out of hand, and mom and dad

792
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: might get scratched or bit But but on a on

793
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:50,399
Speaker 1: another level, there's always that possibility with adult actors as well. Now,

794
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: I think it's an interesting comparison between improv theater and

795
00:45:55,800 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: childhood pretend play. I think kids are sometimes not as

796
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: good at the yes and aspect of improv that's central

797
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 1: to the philosophy of improv. But you know, I think

798
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: that's on another level that's often one of the big

799
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 1: lessons that they learn when they play with others. I mean,

800
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research on this as well. We

801
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 1: didn't know I haven't really got into this but you

802
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 1: have like parallel play with kids where it's like little

803
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 1: Susie and little Bobby. They are not really playing together.

804
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: They are both playing with dump trucks in the sand,

805
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: but they're just kind of playing alongside each other. And

806
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 1: thank goodness they both have dump trucks, because otherwise they

807
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:33,439
Speaker 1: would be a fight.

808
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:36,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can see, yes. And as a form

809
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 3: of sharing, I mean it is a way of give

810
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 3: and take and of sharing, not the physical props of

811
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 3: play if you have to share your one dump truck toy,

812
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 3: but of sharing the direction of the play, sharing a narrative.

813
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. If it's for example, if you're engaging in an

814
00:46:50,160 --> 00:46:53,200
Speaker 1: imagine shared world, in a paracosm, Yeah, you have to

815
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 1: share that, like one person can't be just be the

816
00:46:56,719 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: god of this realm. I guess there's there's room for

817
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 1: maybe a you know, forty sixty split there on creative

818
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: control of the paraphousm.

819
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 5: Yeah.

820
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,319
Speaker 1: But another way that the improv theater example I think

821
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:21,800
Speaker 1: is interesting is that it's an example where adults often

822
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: or at least sometimes have to relearn how to engage

823
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: in pure imagination play. You know a lot of you

824
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:31,840
Speaker 1: hear plenty of accounts of adults who take an improv

825
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: class and it's like they're one over by it, you know,

826
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:37,760
Speaker 1: it transforms them, like they're able to reconnect with this

827
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: this creative energy that they hadn't had, perhaps since they

828
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: were kids. And this all kind of ties into that

829
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 1: whole idea of creativity as being this expression of the whole.

830
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just this thing you know you

831
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: do you know in this one exercise like it is

832
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: you know, it is a way that you're able to

833
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: process things and let things out. Now, another example that

834
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 1: they bring this one was really fascinating in part because

835
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 1: we already kind of stumbled over this a little bit

836
00:48:05,600 --> 00:48:10,840
Speaker 1: when we were talking about imaginary friends. We were talking about, Okay,

837
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 1: what do adults engage in that are akin to imaginary friends?

838
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: And we talked about things like speaking to angels and

839
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: shouting at the devil and so forth. But the example

840
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,319
Speaker 1: brought up in this paper is that you will have

841
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:32,760
Speaker 1: the situation of adults engaging in conversation with the dead

842
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: had a grave site. For example, adults essentially engaging in

843
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 1: a conversation with an imagined or simulated mind. And this

844
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:43,800
Speaker 1: was an idea that was apparently discussed in a paper

845
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: by I. E. Josephson nineteen ninety eight titled constructing Oneself

846
00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: in the City of the Silent.

847
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 3: Oh wow. This is interesting because just last night I

848
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 3: was reading sort of a biographical article about the life

849
00:48:57,200 --> 00:49:01,719
Speaker 3: of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and she apparently

850
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 3: had an an extremely important relationship with her with her

851
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,719
Speaker 3: mother's grave, essentially with her mother was an important writer

852
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:14,239
Speaker 3: in her own right, Mary Wollstonecraft, and she she would

853
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 3: visit her mother's grave and like apparently had a strong,

854
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:21,359
Speaker 3: powerful emotional relationship with her mother's tombstone, would sort of

855
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 3: like talk to and relate to her mother who died

856
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:25,799
Speaker 3: after giving birth to her.

857
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, And I feel like a lot of us

858
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:33,880
Speaker 1: can speak to examples of this the way that ganku

859
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,440
Speaker 1: at all sum this up. They say, quote, these conversations

860
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: enabled the grieving survivors to reinterpret their joint past with

861
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: the deceased, as they also help them prepare for the future,

862
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:48,240
Speaker 1: a finding that is corroborated by other clinical studies.

863
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:49,840
Speaker 3: Yeah.

864
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:52,280
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like a lot of us can

865
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 1: can speak to this on some level. I've certainly engaged

866
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 1: in this before, speaking to the dead, reaching for the dead,

867
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 1: particularly at a great side. Yeah, and I want to

868
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:05,840
Speaker 1: stress again, as we've touched on this many times on

869
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:07,960
Speaker 1: the show, that we as humans are capable of juggling

870
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 1: multiple and even contradicting ideas about say, the persistence of consciousness.

871
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: Have you contradicting ideas in your head, multiple of them

872
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: at once. So, you know, standing at the grave of

873
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 1: a loved one, you might at once feel as if

874
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:25,800
Speaker 1: you were speaking to a person who is in the past.

875
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 1: You know you're speaking you're a person who only exists

876
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:31,440
Speaker 1: in memory. You may also feel, on another level, like

877
00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:34,439
Speaker 1: you are speaking to the ghost of a loved one

878
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:38,080
Speaker 1: that is spiritually present, like in a movie about a ghost,

879
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: or someone who is there but invisible, like in other

880
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:44,759
Speaker 1: movies about ghosts. I mean, you really can't discount the

881
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: power that say, ghost movies have on these sort of

882
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: like almost subconscious ideas about the deceased and the role

883
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,520
Speaker 1: that they have in our lives. You might see them

884
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 1: as a spirit of a loved one that is now

885
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:03,480
Speaker 1: residing in another realm of existence. You know, the idea

886
00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: that will they're looking down on me and so forth.

887
00:51:06,520 --> 00:51:09,760
Speaker 1: You also, on some level, maybe even like front loaded,

888
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, well, this is just an empty

889
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: corporeal vessel, like there's you know, there's nothing here. I

890
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: am just engaging in this idea of the person that

891
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 1: is passed. And then yeah, ultimately you might think of it, Oh,

892
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:24,439
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with a mental simulation of the deceased via

893
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:29,000
Speaker 1: theory of mind. Hmm. Yeah, And for something as deeply

894
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:32,080
Speaker 1: personal and emotional as a grave sided conversation with the dead,

895
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to accept that any number of

896
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: these can be in play, and we shouldn't be dismissive

897
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 1: of any of them, at least from an emotional standpoint,

898
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: you know. But I think it's a great concept concerning

899
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: the power of human imagination and our engagement with simulated

900
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 1: realities as a means of processing and evaluating feelings and

901
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: as an expression of wholeness and creativity, you know. So

902
00:51:55,239 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: you know it is it is ultimately a kind of

903
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:02,319
Speaker 1: pretend play, but pretend play that you know has very

904
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:05,279
Speaker 1: high emotional stakes. But at the same time, it's not

905
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:09,280
Speaker 1: useful in the sense that it is going to change

906
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:12,960
Speaker 1: the world or generate income, but it can be highly

907
00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:17,120
Speaker 1: useful depending on the individual obviously, in the situation, like

908
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:20,919
Speaker 1: for their their own feelings and for their own sense

909
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:21,600
Speaker 1: of well being.

910
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:24,640
Speaker 3: Well, this actually makes me reframe one of the ways

911
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:27,799
Speaker 3: I was thinking about childhood pretend play. In the first part,

912
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 3: we briefly discussed a definition of play, which is that

913
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:35,399
Speaker 3: it's non instrumental activity. It's activity that is not put

914
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:40,439
Speaker 3: toward any kind of external purpose. It's purely It's often

915
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:44,240
Speaker 3: described as purely for enjoyment, and that makes it sound

916
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 3: like anything that is play, or by extension, pretend play,

917
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:52,840
Speaker 3: should be for fun. But actually, I mean, obviously, I

918
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 3: think it makes sense in a way to call this

919
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 3: kind of interfacing with the dead a form of pretend play,

920
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 3: except the word play sounds wrong because play is supposed

921
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 3: to be fun. But then when I think of the

922
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 3: pretend play games I actually like watch my daughter go through.

923
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:12,839
Speaker 3: They're usually fun, but they're not always fun. Sometimes they

924
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:16,439
Speaker 3: actually feel quite serious and sometimes quite sad. Like one

925
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:20,080
Speaker 3: thing she likes to do is to pretend to treat

926
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:25,000
Speaker 3: and heal the wound of her toys, and she she

927
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,879
Speaker 3: gets kind of sadness in her voy, you know, she's like, oh,

928
00:53:27,960 --> 00:53:33,239
Speaker 3: he you know, dinosaur, her need feel better. And that

929
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 3: almost strikes me as somewhat similar to the Graveside conversation.

930
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 3: I mean, in a way that still has to be play,

931
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 3: that is play, but there's no laughter involved, it's not fun,

932
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:46,120
Speaker 3: and the main emotion seems to be sympathy and sadness.

933
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:47,280
Speaker 4: Yeah.

934
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:49,400
Speaker 3: So I don't know. There are many many ways obviously

935
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:52,399
Speaker 3: in which those things are different, but it does seem

936
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 3: to drive home that there's maybe something that is missing

937
00:53:56,400 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 3: when we think of play as an activity that is

938
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 3: strictly were fun. Instead, it's something that's like usually for fun,

939
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 3: but it also can sometimes be something else. It's something

940
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:11,680
Speaker 3: we're doing for kind of intrinsic motivations, but they're not

941
00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 3: really related to like pleasure or laughter or excitement.

942
00:54:16,640 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so at any rate, Yeah, these, like I say,

943
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: I thought I was gonna get more into sort of

944
00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:27,399
Speaker 1: granular discussions of you know, of adult imagination play and

945
00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:31,240
Speaker 1: like the benefits of engaging maybe in something like improv theater.

946
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:33,960
Speaker 1: And yeah, I realized this all ended up being a

947
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 1: little bit broader and a little bit more philosophic, But

948
00:54:37,960 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fascinating and it made me

949
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: sort of rethink a lot of what I thought I

950
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:42,319
Speaker 1: knew about creativity.

951
00:54:42,680 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally all right.

952
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 1: Well, I think we're going to go ahead and close

953
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: this episode out, and we're thinking we're going to be

954
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:52,200
Speaker 1: back with one more of these, because there's still plenty

955
00:54:52,239 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 1: to talk about. And in the meantime, we'd love to

956
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:56,879
Speaker 1: hear from all of you. I know we have some

957
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: people out there who are improv actors or certainly taken

958
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: an improv class or two, or done a little improv

959
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:06,239
Speaker 1: maybe in a college acting class. Tell us about it.

960
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 1: How do your experiences line up with what we've been

961
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: discussing here, Any other of your thoughts, experiences, and so

962
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:16,880
Speaker 1: forth concerning this episode or the previous episodes in the

963
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:19,520
Speaker 1: Pretend Play series write in. We would love to hear

964
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:22,720
Speaker 1: from you. And oh and as always, if you want

965
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: what you share to be to not be shared in

966
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: a future listener mail episode, let us know and we'll

967
00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 1: honor that. Likewise, if you would like to use a pseudonym,

968
00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 1: you know, just let us know as well. Just tell

969
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:37,600
Speaker 1: us what to do with the copy you send.

970
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,160
Speaker 3: Us, with the understanding that if you don't give us

971
00:55:40,200 --> 00:55:42,839
Speaker 3: any instructions of that sort, we will use your first

972
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:45,799
Speaker 3: name and consider it fair game to read on air.

973
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, all right, just a reminder. Stuff to Blow

974
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast. Core

975
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays

976
00:55:54,920 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 1: and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to

977
00:55:57,360 --> 00:55:59,800
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

978
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: If you're on Instagram, follow us at STBYM podcast. We're

979
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:05,799
Speaker 1: being trying to build that one up again because we

980
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:08,720
Speaker 1: used to have another Instagram account. That one went away

981
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 1: and now we have this newer one with a low

982
00:56:11,719 --> 00:56:15,359
Speaker 1: follower account. To be clear, trying to get those numbers up.

983
00:56:15,400 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: We have higher numbers on other platforms like Twitter, but

984
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 1: I kind of want the Instagram want to be hired,

985
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 1: so help us out with that if you have the

986
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 1: ability to do so.

987
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,319
Speaker 3: We have a Twitter account.

988
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do. It's active. You can follow us on Twitter.

989
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 1: It does get updates about the content.

990
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 3: Huge things as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

991
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

992
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:42,760
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

993
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:44,919
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

994
00:56:45,239 --> 00:56:48,239
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

995
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:56,880
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

996
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:00,200
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. More

997
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:03,840
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

998
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 2: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

999
00:57:24,320 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 3: H