Welcome to the Energetic Radio podcast. This episode is brought to you by the school of play dotco, hosted by Dale Sibonham and Paul Campbell. Each week, we'll bring to you tips, strategies, and ideas on how you can bring more joy and happiness into your life and those you share with. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Energetic Radio podcast episode 340. Wow. We we're getting there, Darwin. We're we're racking them up. We're racking them up.
Oh, yeah. And today's a cracker. We've got a special guest on today. And the best thing about this special guest is up until 2 weeks ago, we had no idea this man existed. We had not crossed paths yet, but let me tell you, we are bloody glad and bloody wrapped that we did, because you're gonna come to love him just as much as we do. But our special guest today is Marcus Veerman. Welcome, Marcus. How you going, guys? Great to be here. Really well. Thanks.
Thanks for joining us on energetic radio. Just for you guys playing at home, what we love about Marcus, he's a creative mastermind. He's got an amazing social conscience. He's a bloody good human. We strongly believe here at the School of Play that kindness and play are superpowers. And let me tell you, this man has them in spades. And when we heard his story literally a week ago now, we we we crossed paths and and heard his story. We instantly went, we've gotta get this done to the podcast.
I think I stopped in midlife and said, just do you wanna do a podcast as well? Keep talking. 100%. And and the cool thing is, Marcus used a term called a nowist. You know? And and, Marcus, you're gonna piss yourself, but I've used that term a few times since our meeting, with business calls and business meetings, and I've used the term now. So it's gone it's landed really well, to be honest with you, mate. So, I think that's a movement that might stick bigger
here at the school play. So before we get going, thank you for introducing us to the world of Naos. And, the man to my right is definitely Naos. No. No. You're a Naos, so, that's bloody brilliant. Marcus, before we kick things off, Dale hates it, but I love it. I'd like to I'd like to start our podcast episodes with some useless stats based around about, what episode we're up to. We're up to episode 340, people. And let me tell you, finding stats is getting increasingly
Kinda metric. Harder and harder. But here we go. So stats for 340. At the recent Paris Olympic Games, there were 340 shooters at the games. There you go. Spare few athletes. Yep. The world record got 2 world records for you. 3 world records, actually. The world record for the largest stack of casino chips is from Travis Stitch, and it's 340 casino chips stacked up vertically before it fell over. Wow. Not bad. And the largest drum set in the world consists of 340
pieces. Can you imagine playing a drum set for 340 pieces? Where the hell would you start? I can't imagine you got 3 stats for 3. I'm pretty impressed with those ones. I'm pretty impressed. If you can see Marcus' face right there, he's like, what if I get through here? I'm just trying to imagine, like, having arms, like, having that that many pieces and having arms, like, how would you arrange them so you could reach them all and reach them? Agree more. And I haven't seen a visual of these 340
people, obviously. Real? So it might not be real, but I thought Google told me yesterday, oh, chat JPT. Found me some rippers. But, yeah, what a what a couple of stats to open up our episode. But, anyway, back to you, Marcus. So I won't steal your thunder too much, but I just wanna explain the to our listeners, why we fell in love with you, straight away. And so Marcus is the CEO of Playground Ideas and the founder of what's an amazing concept called the noodle cart.
And my favorite thing is since 2010, he's built 7,212 sustainable playgrounds in a 143 countries that's impacted over 3a half 1000000 children globally. Bang. Huge. I should say, just for the listeners out there, I cannot take credit for the
vast majority of those. We run an online platform that supports, like, thousands of amazing people around the world to do that work really cost effectively themselves, and we just give them everything they need to make sure that it's, you know, adventurous and well designed and safe and all of that stuff. So I, yeah, I can't take credit for the vast majority of that. I have built a lot of playgrounds in really absolutely amazing places, around, you know, along
the Taibang border for refugees and other things, which maybe we'll talk about. But, yeah, definitely, I need to give huge amount of kudos to the community who picks up the challenge every day and builds a playground somewhere different, which is you know, the they're the real heroes. So I'm not trying to
be sort of, you know, foe humble about it. I'm proud of what I've done, but I definitely, you know, I can't I I always I always just try and be really clear that I have not physically traveled to all those countries into wood and, you know, done stuff. I did a lot of that in my early days, and I I expended way too much energy trying to kill myself doing that. And, you know, I'm really glad that we engaged a community of people who
jumped on board and done that. I love that. What what's the saying you, you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. You teach a man how to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Right? So that's what you're doing. You're you're educating these people in third world countries how to sustainably build their playgrounds and therefore they can then spread that to ripple effect. Right? And then they can then teach other people, and it goes from there. So it's a
really sustainable practice, BB Krater. But, you know, at the start there, I said he's a bloody good human and how's that? Already already humble already humble off the bat. You know, I can imagine how he saw a thumb you should have from Belton in play 7,200 playgrounds. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I'll definitely have I love it. I love it. Marcus, one of the questions we love to kick off on the pod is is a really simple question. And it's it's what has lit you up in the last 7 days?
That's a really good question. What has lit me up? I think the big thing at the moment, so within so you mentioned noodle cart. We now have to call it kinda noodle because we've got the carton, the row for schools, and then we've got this new one, the pod, the noodle pod for homes. And I think, we have finally we're currently shipping, like, a 1,000 of them to families around the world. And what just has just set me on fire is we've got this so I didn't wanna just
make a toy. I wanted to create a community of people. And so now there's something like 4 to I guess it's 4 to 500 families who are part of this private chat group just for families so that they sort of feel confident to share their stories and the stuff that they're doing. And, you know, we've built, you know, hundreds of different configurations of our toy that kids can play with toy replacements and then other
kooky strange, crazy toys. But just in the last week, we've had so many people just have just blown me away with new and crazy cool ways to design stuff for their children, but then also children feeding back. They just leave this thing in the middle of the room and children building these just super cool just cute little super cool creative things that children have just been able to just experiment
around until they come up with stuff. And that that just, you know, that just warms my the cockles of my heart to see families face to face, screen free, just, you know, in that flow creative flow state between a parent and a child or siblings even. We've had a whole bunch of videos of siblings, you know, older kids pushing their little, you know, baby siblings around in a little toy pram or a cot or something they've just created. All that kind of stuff is just it's, you know,
like yeah. That that's that's some good quality stuff. It's rewarding. Right? It's rewarding to send you yeah. What what it's kind of fruition. I won't lie to them. I because we we did some research once we met you, and then we went and I did some research. And, I came across you noodle pod, and I'm blown away with it. I think it's a ripping idea. I've already shared it with a few of my mates who have, just had kids or have got young kids. I'm like, you guys, this is a
great Christmas idea. Because not only is it is it wooden, and parents love wooden things because Plastic crap. You know, you kinda mind drawing this plastic crap every day. It's fine. But it's it's beautifully made and crafted, but what I found is it it would turn your children into toymakers, into engineers, into creative little souls. It would just do wonders for them creatively.
And, yeah, I think it's a brilliant idea. And as you said, that one little pod, that one little idea you've got can be transformed into hundreds of different activities or ideas or concepts, and it's endless. Right? And I think it is a brilliant concept. For those of you who haven't checked it out, jump on. Just just Google noodle card or noodle pod. I think it's a ripping business, Christmas idea. I wanna throw on the spot Mark. Because I'm not sure if you can throw
us a discount code for a Christmas gift card through our listeners or something. I'll Oh, yeah. If that's alright. No. If you go to the the actually, the best thing that you can do is just go to the website and join the VIP club. It costs $29. That $29 will get you, by the time you factor in, free shipping and the 30% off discount that
we're offering at the moment, you're getting it for almost half price. And without wanting to hustle people, when you get this, we are we are having to we're sort of going out of that launch Kickstarter phase and into, like, just a normal sort of, you know, ecommerce kind of thing, because we've just we've we've almost delivered all the Kickstarter pods. And once that's done, we've got a we've actually got to run a business and make it
work. So all of that all of that will go away because we're starting to get real recommendations from real families going, hey. This is a great investment. You should do it. So but right now, if you join the VIP, you're getting, like yeah. It works out to be almost 40% off, which is 100 of dollars. Wow. Yeah. So you are That's better than any code. 100%. You've I exceeded most of the time. I was gonna get a 10% discount code today. That's what I was I was gonna get a
10% discount code today. That's what I was hoping for. I was like, surely, he'll give us a discount. He's given us 40%. Thank you. I appreciate that. That is awesome. I can give you a QR code if you wanna put it on your page or whatever. The ping pong scan if you want. I can we can totally do that. We can do that. So listeners, for sure, let's let's do that. So we'll throw a QR code up there, for sure for listeners, and you can access it. Honestly, it will make a great Christmas present, for
your nieces, your nephews, your kids, whatever it might be, your grandkids. I guarantee the parents won't be upset when they pull that one out of the box. No. They won't. Because it's not plastic crap. Yeah. It's not a screen. It's not a screen, and it will do wonders for their little minds. That's for sure. Anyway, let's get away from the the noodle cart and the business itself. We wanna hear a bit more about you, Marcus. So, tell us a bit of that story,
mate. Yeah. Yeah. You activated us, after I'd blabbled and you said you've got ADHD, so do I. We connected very well over that. We both love play. But then you just proceeded to tell us one of the most elaborate stories that just kept getting better and better for your journey of what you've been able to achieve to where you are now. So give that to our listeners, mate, because we wanna hear it again. Yeah. Where did they start? Where where did where did play Playground Ideas and the Noodle
Cuddle begin with your kindness? So okay. I'll try. And just tell me just tell me to shut up or move on. I go down like like, if I go down too deep down to rabbit warren rabbit hole just a little bit. I think the the very first thing was I so this is an education podcast. I am a trained
teacher. I, studied both I started at Latrobe and did a bit of my end study at, Victoria Uni, and I was really lucky throughout that process to study health, specialization in health and outdoor education, sort of as my sort of specializations for it was a prep to 12 degree.
And I think having that focus gave me a broader aspect of child develop childhood development and sort of what we're trying to do as teachers, you know, not just focusing on curriculum, but actually a holistic view of what is a child and and, you know, how do we want them to go through education and parenting as well to come out the other side to thrive with the skills that you need
to do well in life as opposed to, you know, we look. I think it's well known these days that just because you do well in school doesn't mean that you do well at all in life. You know? That that that they're not those things are are not correlated. And I think also you can be, you know, along with that point, you can be an a grade student, but, you know, there's a lot of things that we don't call mental health
issues or mental illnesses or disabilities. But if you're chronically shy or you're lacking in confidence and, you know, the ability to put yourself out there in this kind of new gig economy world where you kind of, you know, just gotta kind of make make your own path. You know, you don't have some career dude who's gonna go, right, you know, start as an internship and then move up through the ranks, and then you get a gold watch at the end of your life. We're
we're really, really. We don't live in that world. Like, I mean, decades ago, that's changed, but I feel like we're still stuck in this kind of world where we expected if we just do this thing, there'll be a path for us. But, actually, what we're seeing is that that's that's not true. You know? And with house prices the way they are and other things, you've gotta kind of hustle a little bit and sort of find your way through these things, to be
successful. So first of all, I I think I was lucky to sort of see things from a holistic perspective. 2nd of all, I was extremely lucky, just totally by chance that the the my last year of uni, there was an opportunity to do the last 6 months of my study in the Philippines. So I went to, developing, you know, low income nation.
I was very lucky to study at a really premium university there, but, you know, you'd walk out of the gates of the school, and I was you know, there was just abject poverty, everywhere. Right? And so we were we were also became honoring members of the University of the Philippines mountaineering club. So we got to travel the whole country top to bottom and did them. It just it was an incredible time of just opening my eyes because I've never I've I've never even been on a plane when I was
Oh, wow. In my life. In the Philippines. I I don't know how that my my dad is like a hardcore environmentalist, so we just didn't fly. You know? We would we drove to Queensland to go on a holiday once to go to expo 88, you know, things like that. So, that was it was just it just blew my mind. So I left university after this last 6 months of going overseas with this sort of, like you know, it's just so ready
and ready to go. So, basically, the 1st 7 years so this is really where it started was I spent 7 years, working at a whole bunch of schools and then eventually working all over the world with kids in outdoor education, mountaineering, sort of mountain guide sort of settings. And I think when I look back on that, although I didn't recognize it at the time, I was getting an education in education by watching these kids in open ended environments where we did on a
daily basis know what the outcome of today was gonna be. You know, whether the storm was gonna come, whether we're gonna make it to our destination or not, whether someone was gonna get sick, whether we were gonna burn the pasta and go hungry that night. You know, I watched kids in that environment thrive and adapt to that heightened challenge of real life hitting them in the face on a daily basis and then having to respond to that in real ways. You know? And so for me, it was just right from
the get go. I could see there's this fundamental need for children to rub against the real world if we want them to be mature and confident human beings. You know? And and and education can sometimes feel quite insular and closed off from the real world. Like, they're sort of seen as 2 different things. So I was quite lucky in that sense. Then I got to a point when in my late twenties where I would literally look at my backpack on a I got to the point where I wouldn't even
pack until, Monday morning. So I did get and I would see look at my backpack on a on a Monday morning, my empty saggy backpack, and be like, I just don't know if I can do this anymore. Like, I was just completely burnt out. You know, I was I was working 30 to 35 weeks in the bush every
year. So think imagine that you're teaching, what you're doing, what you're teaching. Imagine that, but you're in on a mountain, rain, hail, blazing sun, freezing cold winters every day, waking up on a rocky thermarest, you know, all that stuff. Asthma attacks in the middle of the night. You know, it's just it's pretty it's a hard job, and it's not very well rewarded.
So then I I heard about this guy, Russell Kerr, really inspirational guy. Some of your listeners, I'm sure, will, know of his effect through the hands on learning program. Again, amazing program. At the time, he was running it in, like, maybe 2 to 3, maybe 4 or 5 schools, I guess. Basically, they this had the same vision. Right? You take kids out of their classes for a day a week with the recognition that there is a lot to learn in the
real world as well as in education. So we can get these not not just disadvantaged kids, not just the naughty kids who are really, sort of causing a lot of problems in the classroom, but just the kids who'd really we saw potential in them because they were more creative and more open and wanted bigger challenges and, you know, wanted to be more responsible for what for their learning and stuff. Took them out of their class, and we did crazy things.
We built full sized classrooms. So Frankston I think it's Frankston College was the very first one who built this beautiful straw bile workshop in the school with kids from the foundations all the way up a full construction. And then, you know, bike maintenance, and we donate the bikes to disadvantaged kids, and we did park furniture and all like, I mean,
over the years, I've done crazy things. I helped that was my first kind of go at getting involved with the start up idea, and I helped to write the manual and to sort of set that
organization up for success with Russell. And I was unbelievably blessed and lucky, and I have endless amounts of gratitude for the fact that we were chosen by Social Ventures Australia as one of their, like, high intensity mentorship programs where we got to be mentored by, you know, accountants and lawyers, and all these corporate people came in and
helped to support us to grow that program. So, I did that for a few years, and that's now still absolutely in existence, and our belief is in hundreds of schools around Australia, and that's an incredible program. The reason I left was because I got married to my wife, and she said to me, I'm not marrying you unless we go and live overseas and do some development work. She's like, for a while. She wasn't you know, this image of a
of a swooning wife that I say, will you marry me? And she says, yeah. I I was expecting to come in and say, I'm not marrying unless we go back home to Australia. We do this, we do that, but not quite the opposite of her. No. No. It's like, right. We if we don't go well, I'm not marrying you unless you promise me that you will allow me to do this thing where I wanna go overseas and live for a while
and do some development work. And I was like, sure. No no problem. So I did so literally a year after we, got married, she came to me instead of just won this, Australian Volunteers International Project to work with a theater organization, that creates, like, theater shows that tour through refugee camps to educate people on all sorts of topics, everything from washing your hands to active community citizenship and, you know, all sorts of stuff.
And I was like, okay. So I traveled to so, basically, so of within about, I think, a few months, all of a sudden, my world got turned upside down, and I put everything I owned that I couldn't sell in a garage sale in a backpack, and I ended up in Thailand. And I had for the first time, and I was turning 30, 10 years of working my butt off, like, you know, just doing all these crazy things that I loved, and I landed a country at it. No idea of the language. So in
Thailand, Thailand was never colonized like the rest of Southeast Asia. So almost no one speaks English in terms of, like, English speaking rates. If you go to the Philippines, other places, English is well spoken, whereas we were just I mean, I was just at sea. There was just when when we were living in this, like, remote, village about an hour and a half north of Chiang Mai, and it was absolutely stunning, but, like, no type. So had to learn a language
and then work then work out what on earth I was gonna do. And it just so happened that someone asked me to build a playground. And this and so I did that, based and the reason they asked me that is because I had done a couple of projects in, Madagascar and Vietnam where I built 2 little playgrounds with high school kids. And they heard about me telling that story because it only happened
recently, and they said, can you build playground? And I was like, sure. So I've I've built this really cool, I think it was a dodecahedron cubby house. Dodecahedron is the most complex planar shape, I think it's called. You guys are educated. You know that? Like, there's the cube. Keep talking. Both both PET. You're like no decohedrons. That's going by the overhead. So Anyway, it's It sounds like it's a good thing. I don't know. I
built that little slide coming off. It was next to this beautiful lake, really stunning. And then a little teeny tiny I mean, like, you know, I'm I'm 6 foot 4. This I'm probably 3 and a half foot high Thai principal turned up on a little 1000000 year old motorbike with these 2 I remember she had these 2 massive bags of rice on each handlebar, and she was riding way up into the mountains because she was educating this particular, Darang community, which were kind of like sort
of second class Thai citizens. They moved from Tibet, I think, to this remote region of Thailand, and they had a very, very poorly, or school that had a playground. I just wanna give you a little sort of picture for the listeners. There's one element very common in Thailand, a little metal ladder. Imagine, like, 3 or 4 steps going up to a 44 gallon drum where the ends have been removed. You crawl through the 44 gallon drum, and then you slide down a little slide on the other side.
Right? Classic. You see them in Southeast Asia. Everywhere, they're really cheap to make. When I arrived 20 years after this thing had been installed, there was, like, like, some rusty stub stubs of, like, ladder edges so that the middle part of the ladder was removed, but it was still the upside bit and these little bits, and you you crawl up these rusty
these rusty stumps. And then when you got into the 44 gallon drum, the bottom of the 44 gallon drum, because it had water sitting in it, was just this pockmarked bunch of holes, rusty holes in the 40 4 gallon drum. And then if you manage to make it to the end of that, then you had to do the, I hope I don't get tetanus jump off the end because the slide was completely gone, and all that was left was the 2 rusty sharp stumps poking up from the end of the slide. That was it. Right? Was it
were were there any kids still playing on this thing? Were there for the year? It's usually. Yeah. Yeah. So so if you look on people can go to YouTube. If you look, like, 10 years ago, the video is still there of that of that story of that playground. So I remember there's a bit of video that I I recorded where I was like, this is the worst playground I have ever seen in my life. Like, you know, the fact that kids weren't all walking around with limbs removed from tetanus was just so
that was the first big sort of playground we did. We did they had a teak teak tree plantation within the school, which is kind of weird, but beautiful. It is beautiful old shade covering trees. And we built, like, tree houses. We had huge slides coming off the tree, big sand pits, and, seesaws, and all these kind of crazy stuff under this beautiful forest. It was just really it was stunning. And the whole and the community was amazing.
All these people came out, and helped us to build it, and we had local builders who, you know, like, they were helping to learn teach me tie and learn how to get material. These guys were so amazing at finding cheap materials, and, you know, we went and pulled car tires out of old swamps from the back of the rubbish dump. That was amazing. It was a really amazing trip. Anyway, am I going on too long? No. Keep going, mate. So then very soon after
that playground build, we were moved to a completely different area. We went from a very Thai town right to the Myanmar. A lot of people know it as Burma border on the west side of Thailand, where literally a river that's, like, you know, in dry season is, like, a 1 or 2 feet tall. You can literally stand on that river and see refugees just walking across the river, going backwards and forwards to the village. They were common in Burma
at that time. You know, there were it was common for villages to be burnt down. There was a there was a huge amount of trauma just constantly coming backwards and forwards. You know, there were guys who would take 10¢ and with a big car tire and take an old lady and just push her across the river so that she'd get out of a village. So it was it was amazing to sort of watch that see that area and sort of, you know, it was
raw. You could see it real time. Anyway, we're living in a village called May Site, and we arrived and went to a bar just to have a beer at night, 1 early on. And I met this amazing guy called Greg Antos from an NGO, the World Education Consortium, huge, well funded US based NGO. And he was just a he's just a legend. Like, you know, just sitting there, I told him what I've been doing, and he
was sharing his story. And that night, he said, oh, my mother-in-law just randomly, like, gave me a $1,000. Do you wanna build another playground? Like, we've got all these schools, and they've not they don't have any playgrounds at all. I'll just give you the money. So he just literally just gave me the cash and, lent me a car because we've never had a car before. I mean, we had this crappy motorbike that was always breaking down. And,
and I was just like, sure. Okay. So I just started building a playground there. And from that experience, he then said, I'll tell you what. We every couple of months, we have this meeting with all the NGOs to try and collaborate. It was pretty amazing, actually. All the NGOs, save the children, all these big world vision, they come together and sit down and go, this
is the stuff we're doing. Let's make sure that we are efficient and effective at kind of collaborating our efforts to help these schools and also that we're not giving, you know, 2 lots of money to one school to do the same project but claiming, you know, that kind of stuff. And, anyway, I was invited to
launch the meeting. We it was amazing meeting, actually. By the end of it, we had this sort of list of all the schools on the Thai Myanmar border, and then we basically culled that down to a list of about 40 schools, which was ones who had a a noncorrupt, you know, hardworking principal. They needed a long lease on their land, like a stable place because there's no use building a playground in a in a little shop front that you rent. And they needed to have
over a 100 kids because some of the these schools are huge. They have thousands of kids, and some of them had 10. Right? And then literally for the next 2 years, I just every 2 weeks, we built a playground at each one of those Oh, wow. How many years? So we would we would start on a Monday. We build until the following Wednesday, like the so we a week, like, 10 days. The next Wednesday, we go visit the next school and do, like, a community consultation where we talk about you know, measure the
land and talk about what they wanted and blah blah. Find out if they had, a few dollars that they could put towards it because we'd sort of say we have this much. If you've got a bit more, we can do more stuff. And then and then after that, we'd go back to the old original school that we're working at, finish that off, and have a big opening ceremony on the Friday. And then on the weekend, I I I missed a piece. I would I just had these flyers that I
put in the cafes. What was amazing was that people there was a huge refugee camp, just outside of the town we were living in, and all these backpackers from all over the world would come as part of a just a sort of an experience to
kind of drive past and see these refugee camps and get educated. You know, there were 2 companies that you could see it and get educated about what was going on there and, you know, it was good because people would start to understand the issues a little bit more about, you know, the refugee crisis and, you know, have a bit more of a holistic view about the complexities of being a refugee and, you know, maybe sort out some of these ideas of boat
people and, you know, who's who's in the queue and who's not and what why people make these decisions. Anyway, then they come back to our village called Maison, and they have a coffee or something in the local cafe. And I had these little, you know, these little classic, like, I've lost my cat tear off. Yeah. And they just call me up. So within, within weeks, I had an architect. I had these incredible mural artists.
I had, like, you know, corporate, you know, like, you know, telecom company managers and other people, and they would just join me. So at at any one time, I'd have between, like, 3 to 10 volunteers working completely for free. And they would just come along, and we'd work together on the weekend, design a playground, and then on the next Monday, we just start again. And we did that for a few years. Yeah.
Absolutely, man. And some of those volunteers, they came for 2 days and stayed for, like I remember one of them, this woman, Marietta, from Slovenia. She stayed for, like, over a year. Like, she was just in every playground. If you look at our original work, almost every one of those playgrounds was was painted by her. Just, like, just amazing. Like, just the most beautiful murals all
over the school, and she just spent 2 weeks doing it. She just had a ball, and we loved her, and it was just so that was a really I mean, that time was it was completely exhausting because we just it was just literally 7 days a week, but it was so you know, I look back on that time as being one of those you know, it was like a like those
like, you know, the movie stand by me. You know, there's there's moments where it's, like, you know, there's incredibly young experiences where you're just full of life, full of energy, and you just the whole team is just humming with energy every day. It was incredible. Anyway, that's where the play comes in. You know, I just we just saw kind of this incredible accelerated pace. Just these kids going from no playground, no play space,
hardcore, rote learning. Like and when I say rote learning, I need to explain, like, what that means. Sometimes, rote learning is like, you know, I'll say something and you tell me the answer. I've seen rote learning, which is I will I will sing out the question and the answer, and you just tell me the question. You just say exactly what I've said. There's no like, no cognition. Just memorize this information for hours and hours and hours in a
day. Like Crazy, isn't it? What do you expect to get from a child in for 12 years of education when they're getting that kind of Yeah. You know? They're just running these these freeways between, like, memorization and the other parts of their brain that need that information as opposed to going, you know, what are all the ways
that I can solve a problem? You know, that for me, creativity, and, you know, doctor Tim Paterson, who we work with a lot about what is creativity, you know, one of the key things is, can you solve this problem in 5 or 6 different ways? Right? Do you do you hit a hurdle and go, oh, it's okay. I'll just I'll just hack a solution around the edge. Or do you get stuck and go, I only have one way to solve this problem, and I'll be
stuck. You know, we see that with a lot of people. Right? You see that kind of reaction from people where they just you know, you get those nos all the time from people where they're we can't do this. And I'm like, but what if we can we just, you know Yeah. Like Give it and go another way and and redo it and go another angle and go from there. And that's what society needs more of. Let let's be honest. Needs more people who can think outside the square, pivot, go another way, find another
solution. And I think we're coming back to that. I reckon we're slowly starting to come back around Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're coming back to I think, you know, we touched on the importance of play and and creativity. I think we're starting to really unlock the power of it, and the importance of getting our young minds to learn through play and learn through engagement more so than, you know, pens and paper in your hand and
whatnot. I think I think so. I think definitely when I, you know, I get to talk to principals every way, you get a bunch of events and different things, and I'm definitely, I think we're in that sort of middle stage where there's an emphasis on on that and and really knowing that
it's important. But sometimes I think there's a struggle still that, you know, particularly in the Australian curriculum of, critical and creative thinking and personal and social skills, still think they're a bit too low on the pecking order of what's important. You know? Yeah. And and really explicitly teaching those skills, breaking them down, teaching them to some kids because there are some kids who just they're just not gonna get it unless we teach it. Yep. And
it's funny you bring them up, Marcus. Jeepers. We've we've, sorry. This was intended to come up today. We've we've created a curriculum, the school of play, and we're we're literally in the process of it. We've been mapping it against the Victorian curriculum and the Australian curriculum the last few weeks. It's been a mind numbing process, but, and it's all about those critical skills and those
personal social capabilities. Right? And and we found that out. We've really honed in on them, and our curriculum hits so many of those areas because that's what we feel is one of the most important skills that these young people need to focus on and develop. Yeah. And and so, yeah, some hearing you. Right? Yeah. That's what blew me blew me away. Like, so doctor Tim Paterson, is has written a couple
of books, but, he's from the University of South Australia. And he just blew my mind when I spoke to him, and he said, you can teach creativity. It's not a gift. It's not something that is blessed and bestowed upon some people. You know, you can one of the he he said, here's one of the things you need. If you wanna be creative, you've gotta have high levels of openness. And I was like, okay. That sounds a bit waffly and hard to how do you teach that? It's actually really easy when you
really think about it. Openness is just the ability to be open to new ideas and to absorb them and give them a try. So, you know, I think about openness. A really good way to think about that is in terms of when you put a plate of food in front of a child, I've really tried to work with my kids to be like, you may not like this the first time, but I'd like you to be open to tasting this food and trying to understand why why on earth someone
else would like it. Do you know what I mean? You know what I mean? Just be open to the Yeah. To get them to be curious. Yeah. Like like like, you know, if you get some someone from Europe and you say, this is Vegemite, sometimes you gotta be like, just pause. Instead of you tasting it and just your brain immediately rejecting it before you get into anything, just take that moment to get your mindset right to say, I am gonna give this a shot with the understanding that it is
not this like, not unpleasant for other people. They actually really enjoy it, and there must be a reason for that. So I'm gonna give this one a taste based on understanding. And it and so many things. You watch kids and you're like, you're really low on openness. You can see it. When you when you understand it, you go, woah. You can teach that skill because I can see it in you because I've identified that it's something I can put in a box, and I can
assess a child. You know? So one thing we do with noodle cards, we just we're going all over the place, but That's that's good, mate. If you if you so he Tim Tim said it to me. I was like, well, how would you teach a kid that? And and I and I he said, well, what if you just took gave each kid, you know, 10 5, 10, 15 pieces from a noodle cart? And you said, I'm gonna give you 5 minutes, and you've
got a a device like a phone where you can take a photo. And I want you to, under very heavy time pressure, to build as many different configurations of things as you can in 5 minutes and take a photo of each one. And And it doesn't matter if you don't if you get stuck. As soon as you get stuck, just start pushing pieces together. Something will come. Just be open that the answer will come over time if
you commit to continue to explore. The second your brain you go into that mode of, like, shut down, shut down, shut down. I'm not gonna you know, it's too hard or I'm gonna fail. I'm getting nervous. I'm losing my confidence, whatever. I'm getting you know, we have names for it, like writer's block or Yeah. There's lots of industries. We have these words for when you get stuck. But openness is one of those things that you is the is the practice of, you know, feeling uncomfortable, but
just leaning into it. You know? And I I just that just I mean, as an educator, I was just like, oh, just totally changed my perspective on A 100%. How you get kids to learn because you can teach them these, like, what I call meta skills. It's not about learning numeracy or literacy or whatever. It's teaching the openness to to engage in your experiences and we you know, if you if kids don't have that, you don't get lifelong
learners. Yeah. You know? And and I wanna thank you. Passionate about life. Like, we're we're Sydney as 2 parents, and and I wish everyone listening to us could have seen our reaction. We we looked at each other and went, that was gold. Like, I'm gonna bloody try that, mate. Because I'm gonna go my one kid hates peas. The other one loves them and this and that. But as if you're a parent, like, we love dropping bits of gold in our pods
for not just educators, but for everyone. Right? And and if you're a parent out there listening to that, give that give that a whirl as openness, and and that way of explaining to your child that, hey, someone in the world loves this. So try and have an open mind as to why they would love that and give it a few attempts to like it. And I reckon you'll get them most times. They'll come around to it. Right? I'm going to try that tonight at the dinner time. I guarantee it. I'm gonna try. What's the
purpose to make it a bit more fine grain for you. Go for it. With my kids is I say, if I'm I love cooking. Right? I I as a creative person, you know, I love putting different things on the plate all the time. But if you know you made something that you like and you they probably aren't gonna like, Sometimes what I'll do is, you know, I'll get the spaghetti bolognese out of the fridge, and that's I know because I know they're not they're not gonna eat the tuna mornay
or I don't what whatever let's just say whatever I cook. That'd be boring, but it's something something that I may I'm trying to. My kids are really struggling with, meats. My wife's a vegetarian, so they haven't eaten a lot of, protein based stuff, but really need some protein at the moment. So I've been serving them all sorts of different things, and they get a bit iced
by it, and I get that. What I'll do is I'll say, here's your meal, but on the edge of the meal, on the edge of the plate, in a separate little not touching anything else thing, that's your food experiment. Right? Just a little one portion, you know, maybe 1 or 2 spoonfuls. So you're not getting that you're not getting that, pushback where they've gotta fill themselves up on a whole meal of stuff that makes them wanna hurl. You're just going it's just a
food experiment. We're just experimenting right now. We're just gonna be open to giving something a shot, but I do not expect you to like it today. But I believe that if you were to try these things more, you'll like them more in the future. And the great benefit is that if we go and travel or if we go to other places in the future, you'll feel more confident and comfortable with people, and you won't be freaked out by weird things that they serve when you
have sleepovers or whatever. Because no one likes that kid. Right? No one likes the kid. Social social suicide rather than a 100%. Yeah. Like, no one no one likes the kid that when you serve up a meal, they go, I just ate Vegemite toast. You know? Like Yeah. Anything you want. Nuggets and chips. Nuggets and chips. I think yeah. Yeah. You go to a pub and it'll eat nuggets
and chips. Yeah. So I that my the perfect experiment is if you wanna try it, you know, like, try it in your lowest common denominator size before you go up to that, you're stuck in Brilliant tip. Honestly, man, I got to creative, though. The only thing behind it, and I think that's anything, is the storytelling. The story you've created around that experiment to be open. Like, you're making it so they're the ones that are really deciding that, oh, I can do
that because I wanna, you know, I wanna be this big person. I wanna be able to travel. I wanna do things. You're not telling them. I think that's my biggest down point to Sydney going, oh, wow. No wonder they're not eating anything besides nuggets and chips because I'm telling them they have to. As if they're gonna listen to me. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good point that I
don't expect you know, I'm on your side. I am not forcing you to take a step from here where you're comfortable at nuggets and chips to there knowing that you don't wanna be there yet. Right? But at least you can go, look. It's just that we're just taking the first little step there, and who knows? You might even like it. I've got more in the fridge, and we can have that tomorrow if you like it. But I get it. I'm I'm because, you know, I think
empathy is a really, undervalued skill. Like, seeing seeing the like, really genuinely understanding from the perspective of a child. And I think dads and moms are probably, I think, generally better at this. Yep. In perspective from the child's perspective where they're like, I literally this is horrible. You're making this horrible for me. So instead of going doing that going, here's a little bit. You know? I get it. You're probably not gonna like it. You can even spit it out in the
toilet if you need to, but just I just want you to try. And and then you get rid of all those hurdles of creating that sort of defensive, you know, head to head combat with a child where you can get around on the other side, and they're not gonna go hungry with cold broccoli sitting on the plane. You know? You know what I mean? Where you're like, you're not getting up off the table, but you're also pushing them. You know? I'm not don't I'm not one of these parents
who's just like, oh, honey, you know, whatever you wanna do. You can just eat chocolate for dinner. You know what? Like, I'm not I'm I come from a Dutch background. I'm actually pretty strict, but I think that the strictness is coming into this. Like, I want you to be an open, confident, independent person in the future, and you get there by taking challenging yourself to these little things. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I wanna come
back, Marcus. You spoke about creativity and the importance of creativity for young minds, and you would have seen it firsthand the impact that when you create these environments for children to play on and and create their games, you would have seen them flourish and thrive and be happy little human beings. But I imagine you also would have seen adults, thrive and flourish from from being creative as well. And we don't wanna just make this just
about children education. Like, you know, you touched upon here the importance of creativity, and I imagine the same goes for adults. Right? Like, if we as adults can lean into being uncomfortable and try something new and get creative ourselves, that puts a bit of a pepper now step as well. I know my wife and I had a had a got pottery a little while back for our anniversary and spinning the wheel bloody hard, bloody crazy. But we walked out of there incredibly lifted up and bonded
and whatnot through just being something creative and something different. So what are your thoughts on on adults the importance of adults being creative as well? You would've seen that a fair bit in your time. Yeah. I'm when you're telling that story with your wife, I'm just imagining, what was that, like, nineties movie where the Patrick's face. You guys like, ghosts. Yeah. But the Patrick's eyes I
was Patrick's eyes. Just imagine imagine a bit of Patrick's face like ghosts on a pottery wheel and having this Sander said, it was it was romantic. Let me tell you this. Pottery, I think that's Pottery has that nice balance balance of, like, if you fail, it doesn't matter. You just throw into the ball. There's no I understand. No, like, risk of mucking something up and it being permanent. You just, you know, chuck that clay in the
bin and recycle it and then start over. That's what I love about it. I actually have a pottery wheel, and I I love it. My body does not surprise me. You're you're a crazy you're a creative mastermind. Look at you. You've got a pottery wheel. I think I think with creativity, so interestingly, just yesterday, I did a a massive training for, one of Australia's largest early childhood providers, hundreds of centers. And I had the Victorian, leadership teams in the room, and
I got them building stuff out of the pod. So this is our smaller one, this one here. And I couldn't stop them. God. That would that was really annoying. Like, I I was like, I don't think I just a little snippet. I was just training one little section within a, like, a whole day training, and I only had 30 minutes. But I really wanted to talk to them about their experience. And just getting them to stop, you know, because I I gave them, the the pod comes with a, this really cute, like, classic,
like, 19 fifties. You know, these, like, like, tints. You know? Yep. And I would just take the cards and just give them 1, and I just got them first of all, completely uncreative. I just got them to build, you know, whatever was on the card, and I specifically selected some simple things to get them started a little bit like a taste experiment. Once they were comfortable with it, then I was like, okay. Now is the time to have a proper meal because
you've enjoyed it. Just I just want you as a group of 6 just to try and build something creative. I couldn't stop them. Honestly, like, even when I was talking to them at the end, they still look I just wanna and I think that what's going on there is that, both like, they talk about children being neophilic. Have you ever heard of that term? No. Educated ones. Neo meaning new and philic meaning, like, love or desire or sort of, you know, being drawn to. So children are
drawn to new experiences. So here's an example. Imagine, like, I'm gonna like, you know, if you buy a a set or a kit of a certain brand of plastic, block like blocks. Something to keep it. Right? It's a car or a truck or a helicopter or whatever. The neophilic nature of of that product is you see the thing on the box, and then you get the pieces, and then you master that task by going through the steps to build that car, truck, helicopter, whatever.
The neophilic part of a of a human's brain says, okay. I've mastered that task. Although those blocks can do thousands of things, that box has told me that it has a function, and I've mastered that task. And now I need something new to stimulate my brain because new things create new connections
in the brain. Right? And so I think that we get a lot of hormonal, like, good, like, dopamine and, probably oxytocin and some other things when we're socially connected to people doing creative open ended things because we're constantly doing new things and making new connections, and our brain rewards us for keeping that brain flexible and nimble and worked out. And I think that's why you and your wife really enjoy that pottery is because you're both there's a lot pottery is
great great example because you're doing something new. You're connecting your head, heart, and hands. It's a social activity with your wife. You've got your brain engaged because you've gotta design and create so that something that you want in your mind, And it's connecting with your body, your balance and your fingers, it's fine and gross motor skill to create this vessel or whatever you're doing. It's very
it's a very organic connected process through your whole body. And having a room of pottery wheels where people do it just turns that up to give you the social aspect as well, and all these new experiences, work really well. And so that's why I was I would always say with plastic blocks or newer pod pieces, just buy the box of stuff. Don't get to the box with the thing because you don't wanna trip that neophyllic. You can buy another box and another box and another
box and another box. You wanna open so that the child sets the challenge on their own. Yep. And that when they set the challenge the next time, they'll set it on their own instead of going, I have to complete that task, and I have to complete the helicopter. I have to complete the, you know, the whatever. The what's it called? Millennium Falcon or whatever. Yeah. Once that's done,
have have you noticed that with your own kids? Like I'm I'm I'm mind blown here because I'm putting myself Dale's son, Sonny is a jet at building things out leg Lego blocks. No instructions. Just builds structures. It builds house and house. And every time I come over to the new
one, I'm like, that's amazing. There's windows and doors on and on the opposite, and now my light bulb is going off, man, I've been doing it wrong because I'm a set builder for Lego with my son Hunter, so I will buy a set. And the latest one is a Star Wars Darth Vader spaceship. So it's funny you said them all in full. And the same and we build it, we finish it, and then we roll around and then play with it. And then it tends
to sit there and not get then give it another thought. I really like I love, like you know, I think there's a lot of merit to building something and then having that beautiful thing as a decoration in your house. No problem. What my child would do is they would deconstruct it usually after they've dropped it on the floor and had a total freak out because it's like you know? And and and also the desire to fix it is not there anymore because it's the task
was finished. Yeah. So then it would just literally slowly get deconstructed into a box of things, and then they just want an upset. And so the expert, whatever, would come along that they would yeah. So Yeah. So for all you parents out there, we're better off and I think this is gonna be right. I think we're better off just buying a massive tub of blocks of Lego than and let them free play. Right? Let them be creative and let them create their own pieces of piece of work,
and and that's better for them. Yeah. It's absolutely better for them. There's there's I I don't I I would I would almost challenge anyone in the world listening to this thing. If you can if you can show me that following step by step instructions is better for a child's brain, I'd love to, like, argue that out. Thanks. Must. True. You know, once you've mastered the art of reading some instructions, like an IKEA catalog, and are able to put together a bit of furniture I mean,
really, what else is more to learn there? There's there's nothing. Whereas you said, you know, if you say to the child, here's a bunch of random stuff, create something of value that's new, interesting to you, and and or someone else and that, you know, makes the world a better place. I mean, that, you know, like, adding value to the universe is Right. Is the I know it sounds a
bit awkward and kind of No. It's it's but it's true and it's beautiful. Oh, Oh, it's a bit cliche, but I think, you know, being a producer of things, you know, I think is, or a, someone who
can solve problems. You you know, it doesn't I don't mind if you're, like, one of those you know, if you're working for Greenpeace and trying to save a forest or you're, you know, creating some new financial system or whatever, I'm agnostic on the the end or, you know, what industry or whatever thing you end up doing in your life. But the ability to see, you know, each next step of your journey, take responsibility for that, and then create a solution to those problems, is
just so important. You know? And and I think that I can sum that up actually as saying that I've always had, that I had for years on my wall, and I'm just remembering it's gone now, is that success is just the ability to fail time and time again and keep going. Yeah. That's the only difference between people who suck at things or are not very successful is that or at least, I mean, at least that's true in my life. But Yeah. I
agree. Look it up. We haven't done very well. It's just that they stop. You know? Like, if you just keep going and keep trying things, most things you know, there's a lot of things that will eventually work. And it might I don't mean that, like, if you've got an idea, you should religiously stick to that idea, you know, and just commit to it. You've you've gotta you've gotta get feedback. That idea might
morph and change into something completely different. But most ideas, if you keep working on them, if you've got a kind of a kernel of a good idea there, eventually, even though it might be something completely different in the end, the success will come from you just Yeah. Working through the challenges to make it work. You know? Because every file we talk about a lot in this podcast and in our office, the importance of failure and embracing
failure. Right? Because that's what that's the only way you learn. You learn nothing through success. You really don't you you learn far more through your failures that lead to your success. Yes. So never never give up after the first failure. Ridiculous. Expecting that you're gonna be successful even I mean, who's that, tennis player? I think it was Roger Federer that said, when he looks over his entire career, you know, one of the most, successful tennis
players in in the world, I think that he wins. If you look at it on a point by point basis, he wins 52% of his points. Yep. Is he playing hard? He is playing against hard opponents who are trying to crush him. Right? So it's only that tiny little extra bit that he does over other players to win the game and expecting that so, you know, just sort of putting in perspective what success is. It's just a tiny little bit more than than, the other person. Not being
perfect, is it? It's not being perfect. There's no such thing as perfect. There's no such thing as perfect. Don't you chase it? No. Yeah. Absolutely. And there's a fantastic Michael Jordan video where they've compiled, like, him taking shots and missing them all. Yeah. He's like game winning shots. I've seen that as well. He only hits he was good. Yeah. Trust with the gaming shot x amount of times and missed it more than he more
than he hit it. Right? But everyone remembers him for the few times that he hit it. So he's spot. But he but he learned from those times. He missed in career career resilience and whatnot. And he still wanted that shot. And I think that's the key. That's yeah. I love that point. He still wanted that shot. Even though he'd missed before, he didn't say, no, give it to Pippen, give it to Longley, give it to Steve Kerr. He goes, I I still want it. Let's be
honest. Give it to Longley. No. No. I don't know who Longleaf is. Yeah. So Marcus Marcus looks a little bit light. Longleaf come and think, oh, he's a little bit shorter. Oh, long distance sport. Was it? Yeah. Really? Was he at all? Okay. Yeah. He's massive. He's massive. Now so, obviously, we've mentioned so many things today. And I think that's the beautiful thing about connecting with superstars, Marcus, that we get so many
different things out of these podcasts, and we think we're gonna take away. We're very selfish because I've been sitting here, things I need to hear individually that I didn't actually know today Yeah. That I can take away. And, I love that around just being open. So getting back to the noodle pod because I think, yeah, so many people out there are looking for ways to be creative. Talk us a little
bit about how it came to be. More importantly, you had an awesome kick start campaign, and now they're going gangbusters. Little bit of an idea of how you created that and where the concept came from, mate. Yeah. So, actually, that I'm glad you brought me back to that. So picking up on that story of how we got there. So I was in Thailand, and that that sort of, you know, that Thailand experience has absolutely been monumental to having the understanding to create the
noodle pod. So I went to Thailand, did that 2 years, came home, completely burnt out, exhausted. I was like, I gotta stop traveling. You know, I I can't get, like, some, you know, nasty gut bacterial or dengue fever again. You know, I really it was an amazing time, but it was also tough on my body, tough on my health because we're just working so hard. So that's when I started Playground Ideas, which basically took everything I've learned in Thailand, put it online, and
just went, you know what? I reckon there's probably 20 people in the world right now who would who need this information. You know, that kind of classic sort of Instagram post of, I don't know who needs to hear this right now, but here it is. That went from 20 playgrounds a year to we doubled it 40 to 80 to whatever. And, Pre COVID, we were somewhere between 700 a 1000 projects, and I think post COVID now, we're
sitting about 5 to 700 per year, something like that. So we're just getting back up to that, to that level again, which is exciting. But a few years ago, I was asked by a government development like, a the development, imagine, like, USAID or AusAID, but a different government to we won this contract to build playgrounds in a very young fledgling nation in the
world. And, there were 3 we needed to build 300 playgrounds all over the country, like, from forest to beach to crazy mountain areas to rural areas and in city areas. It was a really hard project. And for lots and lots and lots of reasons, corruption, just challenges with those environments, materials, all that stuff. The project went very, very badly, and and it really left me in a hole, for lots of reasons. Some of them
was a big learning for me. A lot of them were other things out of our control, but I I really sort of as I clawed myself out of that hole of just feeling like, you know, we just really done a disservice to this new country and how we could help the kids. I had this kind of thing of like and again, this is this, like, failure and success is just I had this thing of like, what if, again, what if we could circumnavigate all of the challenges that we had faced to just get a play space to those
kids directly. And my idea was what if we had something in a box that was flat packed on the kind of IKEA model that you could just put in the post and get it to the to a, you know, a location in that country and then disseminate it
out and sold a bunch of bulbs. So this and that became the concept of the noodle cast, the original noodle cart, And crazily at that time, this absolutely phenomenally talented woman called Emma Ribbons, who was a Belgian kind of toy wooden toys on a high quality educational toys, contacted me and said, hey. I'm in a bit of a loose end. We get these all the time. Can I help you?
I'd like to I wanna build a playground. I I wanna do something. I've been working in this thing, and I I need to get out of get out of town and do some. And we on a very first phone conversation, we started cooking up this idea. What if you could create something better than a playground and better than a toy that that did that that embodied the the values that we as sort of humans want in our children because in a lot of ways,
here's 2 sort of another factoids. First of all, like, what value does a slide I've built, I should say, I've built hundreds of slides. Right? But what value does a slide have? What do you have? You know? Like Yeah. A slide is super fun, but, really, for me, a slide fits into the category of play like like Netflix fits into education. You know, there can be some good stuff there, but, really, it's kind of mostly entertainment. Right? Yeah.
As opposed to a playground that has something like a shop front. Mhmm. They're like a shop front. In that environment, children are interacting. The outcome is unknown. It's open ended, and it changes on a daily basis. The value of a pretend shop front versus a slide is is chalk and cheese. Yeah. You see what I mean? In terms of
play and design. And we were like, well, what if we created something that embodied these values that we want of social connection and social skills development, you know, cognitive challenges constantly changing, and physical challenges where you could create something which adapted to your abilities. Where it's instead of having a, you know, like a like a, I don't know, a pretend key a pretend kitchen that has a bench height that's this. You could
just build something that worked with whatever ability. If you're in a wheelchair, if you have a cognitive impairment or whatever, you can build spaces that take you from where you are now to the next wherever you're going. Right? I know that's a vague statement, but you can kinda get where I'm going. Right? It's something totally, genuinely inclusive where you create that world. And in the process of creating, you enjoy
taking those challenges to the next step. And that that became well, the first one was like a garden cart with a bunch of milk crates in it and a bunch of, like, just recycled stuff. And then that very, and then we did a trial in, Lebanon with refugees, and they stole everything. Like, these are super important and plates and cups and spoons and see and and whisks and all that stuff. They they they pocketed everything. And I and I was
like, what an idiot. That's totally of course, they did. We've got, you know, 3, 4, $500 worth of kitchen items here, and we and we're giving them to kids who don't have kitchens at work. Right? So, you know, they just everything just disappears. So that's when we transitioned, and we went, you know what? We're gonna create something where all of the pieces are only usable and valuable to children, and they can create everything, but they're not so things will go missing.
That process cost a huge amount of money because we tested in a bunch of refugee camps around the world, and that's obviously very expensive. So in the final trial in, like, maybe early 2019, we tested in 12 schools this loose parts box all made from plywood and silicone and fabrics and all this other stuff in Australian schools. And 8 of the 12 said, can I buy 1? And I was like, I literally just I was like, I I never need this. I'm
like, alright. Like and then all of a sudden, like, sort of processing that information, I was like, oh, what if we could have our charity of Playground Ideas? And that could be funded through amazing schools who wanna move into this area of open ended learning and and getting more engagement, and that flow statement from kids where they can then take teachers can observe that and then jump into the curriculum or say or even say, hey, Fred, what you just
did there by balancing those two things together, that's called leverage. Can you tell the class what how you managed to get those things to do that? And all of a sudden, you're doing the curriculum, but in this really organic Through play. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Through play. Through the just experiment exploration, whatever. And you gain STEM skills and social skills and all personal social, creative and creative thinking skills. They're all there, and in a
real way, you can actually assess kids. And that's where we sort of shifted to say, we will sell these to Australian schools and other, you know, western people who can afford them. We'll sell them to NGOs, and we will continue to do our development work where occasionally we have grant rounds and donations of arts and rollovers to different countries and different things.
So at the moment, I'm actually just working on, I just got a donation yesterday of, a few $1,000, which will turn into a grant to donate pods to domestic violence shelters for women who've left home with children who leave everything behind and and don't because it's a it's a great sort of therapeutic thing for kids. So that's where we started from was this failure, and I and, also, we also had problems with when we were building playgrounds. Sometimes the materials
would get stolen overnight. So that we you know, we'd order all the materials, and we'd be about to build a playground. Someone would jump the fence and steal all the steel. Or, or another problem was, like, we'd be building a playground in India, but it's monsoonal. Right? And, you know, Bangladesh or India, sometimes the play space would be a meter underwater for, like, 3 months of the year. How do you build a playground in that environment? So then the both of you got a noodle cart is you can
bring it inside and just use just push the desks aside. Yeah. We literally worked on a project where the school was an island. The the school building was, like, literally a raised bit of earth, and all around it had stepping stones to get out of the school, and then in the dry season, they could play. You know, this noodle cast has solved a bunch of these really weird problems that we had to deal with, but just so happened to also create this amazing educational stimulation
creativity open ended tool for you know? Well done. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. So that that's kinda how we got there. And now what we've got is we've got the noodle cart for 30 kids. So that's our big, super robust industrial sort of version. And the reason it looks so industrial is because it's designed to go to into refugee camps, and I never wanted to create one for poor kids and one for rich kids. It's the same thing that goes everywhere.
And then during COVID, we really you know, obviously, schools don't want a product that everyone's touching, so we just put went head down, bum up, and we created the rover, which is, a small group tool. So that's fantastic next to the like, for
instance, like the AP or deputy principal's office. Instead of kids coming out of their classes having a meltdown and you trying to talk to them face to face when their brains are exploding with cortisol and stress hormones, just give them 20 minutes with the rover where they can be self directed, in control of themselves,
and they can build something which is interesting to them. They get back on their base, and then you can have a side by side conversation about what happened with mom over Christmas, over over breakfast, whatever. So we that's so they've they've been using 100 of schools with the well-being teacher or the or the AP.
After that, we designed one for, hospitals. So there's a recycled HTP plastic version of the rover because there are no resources for OTs and other people in high infection environments for kids who has got cancer or other long term illnesses in hospitals. So that's sitting over there in the office. We haven't sold any yet with because we we hit COVID, and it was just like impossible Yeah. To make that work. Is anyone listening who thinks that they could help us to get them into hospitals? I
would love to talk to you. And then the final thing is obviously the pod. So that's this you know, it's if people are watching, you know, it's a it's a box full of stuff about the size of 2 shoe boxes and comes with sticks and wheels and fabrics and silicon pieces and all of that stuff that can does two main things. It replaces toys. So you mentioned that sort of at the start. Mhmm. Reduces clutter. Like, kids kids need space to play. If you wanna connect your brain and your hands and your feet,
they're most people's bedrooms these days are kind of storerooms, really. It's like a bed and the stuff, and then and then the actual place spills out into the the lounge room. But because that's a shared space, often it drives parents crazy, so the kids are having to
shuffle all the stuff back in the bedrooms. The pod, by replacing all of your large scale toys like ride ons and, rock, rocking horses and standing tables and easels and, you know, that little, you know, that little, like, hammer game where you hammer pegs into a box or it's like a, you know, like a shape sorter, all these big toys. It just does all that. So you don't need any of that. So that then goes creates a space in the bedroom for the children to do cartwheels and somersaults
and all that stuff. And then the second big thing that it does that I think is is its fundamental change that makes it a toy like toys were always supposed to be is it gives the child the opportunity to develop and grow by creating their own stuff instead of just doing whatever some corporation tells them to do on the front of the box. I mean, you know, any toy that you look at on the box that tells you where an adult can look at and go, I know exactly what is gonna happen with this toy.
It's got one function. And for me, it's a bit of a waste of money. It's a bit of a waste of space. It's a bit of a waste of resources and plastic and all that stuff. You know? And and for me instead, you know, and this is totally biased, but I'm like, buy toys and do a 1,000,000 things like the pod, and then take your money at birthdays. Here's my big, like you know, so do that big investment of the a really high quality thing like
the pod. And then what I do with my kids at Christmas and whatever is I say, I want you to think big. What is the craziest thing that you love? Ridiculous. I don't care what it costs. You know, for my daughter, it's horse riding lessons. I can't afford horse riding lessons. What am I? I'm not a Persian king. Like, they're not. Right? So, like, it's it's so expensive. So what I would just say is, okay. Then that's what we'll ask
people for. We'll say that that's what you'd really love. And so she's been able to go for horse riding lessons throughout the year because for her birthday and for Christmas, that's what she asked for. And my for my son, it's been a mountain bike. And this year, he got some crazy expensive basketball boots because he's, you know, just he got bought a pair of Jordans. And we
put in a bid for his birthday. And then he asked all of his friends and family to put in, and he walked into, you know, this massive sports store with literally, like, a a roll of cash. And he's like and I was like, good on you. You know? Like, this is a great no plastic crap. Something he really committed to and love, and I know that he'll use throughout the year. And it was you know, he got to be in control
of that and to have that experience. So for me, you know, things that get you experiences and less stuff is is really the answer. Yeah. I love that. And that's a brilliant way to wrap up. And I'm obviously making some notes as we go along, and it's this pod has gone on so many different avenues and journeys and but there's been little bits of gold the whole way through it that I'm going to take away personally with me, as a human being, but as a parent and as a father.
And I'm going to try and recap a few things here as as we sign off. But Good luck. Good luck. We want to start with perspective. Let's rewind the very start of it and and your story to get to where you are and how you came about being, you know, the CEO of Playground Ideas
and just put things in perspective, people. So think about what the other side of the world are facing, refugee camps, you know, poverty, etcetera, etcetera, and be incredibly grateful for where we are and what you've got, and try to always put things in perspective. I don't think it's that bad what we have to deal with on a day to day basis, what some people think and feel. Yeah. And listen to this pod and go jeepers cross. Look where Marcus has come from
and what he's been doing over there, and and they would have been happier. Right? I mean, when we first met, you said they were incredibly happy communities still despite having nothing. So, you know, put things in perspective. Travel, people, gold bloody travel. Yes. Marcus, I'm sure you'll attest for this. My old man. I'm forever grateful for him. He gave me some really standard advice that I need to go and see the world. And it
seems as though you travelling has changed your life. It's like a fork in the road moment. Right? Perspective is everything. Travel gives you perspective on where you sit in the universe. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. Sense of community. The places you've worked in have had a sense of community in spades, and they've been willing to give up everything for that sense of community, give their time, give their resources, the guy that gave you a $1,000 without even knowing you.
You know what I mean? To do something good for their community. People that are contacting you constantly to wanna go and contribute to a sense of community and then staying there for a year's time. So if you're listening to this, I think it's good for your soul, and it's good for those around you, and it's good to role model to go and be a part of your community and give where you can. A little bit of time, a little bit of energy.
You what I mean? That sense of community is brilliant. Humanity is awesome. I've written here, humanity is awesome. You've restored my faith in humanity a bit today, Marcus. I appreciate that. You yourself are an unbelievably great human being, and it sounds like you've worked with 100 of amazing human beings. And, yeah, it's just really beautiful to see that there are people in the world that that are really here for other people, and and that kindness ripple effect is amazing.
Creativity, I'm gonna almost finish. Creativity is super important for our development, our kids' development, but for our happiness and our connection. And I'm gonna throw you something. If you're an employer, if you're a manager, if you're running a business meeting, if you're doing anything, get something fun and playful and creative for your team to do at your next
team meeting. Yep. As Marcus touched upon you, and he worked with x amount of educators, and he couldn't bloody stop them talking, couldn't stop them going nuts, couldn't stop them having fun. And in that moment, they were present. They weren't worrying about their to do lists. They were present, and they were connecting with each other in a really fun, playful way. And they walked out of that session with a spring in their step. And that's just through being playful and being creative.
So if you're in the position to create that opportunity for people, do so. Yeah. 100%. You know, do so. It's super bloody powerful and important. This is my bit of gold is food experiment. You know, we've got I think this podcast has got a parent with wait. Pop culture parenting, get your heart out. This is now, yeah, this is now parenting podcast as well, and I love that. And I think people are gonna take a
lot away from that. Me personally wanna thank you and Dale too because I'm a 100% trialing the food experiment on my children's plates moving forward. And most importantly, mate, just, you know, give back to people whoever you can, and don't be put off by your failures. You know what I mean? It's not always gonna succeed for someone. Celebrate them. Yep. Embrace them. Learn from them. Keep going back to the well,
and eventually gonna end up in places like you ended up, mate. And you are doing incredible things for this world, not just Australia, but for the world. And people go out and research. I'm not this isn't a selling point. We're not making nothing out of this. But go and have a look at the noodle pods and the noodle carts. I think it's a ripper. I'll personally buy one for my kids for Christmas, and and use we'll put the the QR code
up. But, what you've created, Marcus, is a is a truly genius little bit of equipment for kids and people worldwide, and it's doing good for humanity. And, yeah, from the bottom of my heart and from the bottom of my dials, I wanna thank you for coming on our podcast. No worries. Appreciate it. And and, look, just one thing I did mention is just we also have incursions for kids. So they start at $12. So if you wanna try it, there's, like, 0, like, you
know, obstruction to entry to just give something like this and go. And just see see how it works. We'll even give you a free demo if you're a teacher. We'll just come to your school and show you that we're that confident in it, and it'll and we know that it'll blow your mind. So Yeah. And I'm
thinking, like, child care centers, like, we've both got kids at yeah. We've both got kids at kinders, and I think they should both our kinders they should have one of these at their kinder because I think it's way better than the toys I see them playing with. So early childhood centers, primary schools, high schools, even like Kinder's a 100%. Yeah. Get amongst it. Research it. Hit up Marcus, at Playground Ideas and Noodlecart.
You won't be disappointed. And we'll round that out. So, Marcus, I know this isn't the end of our journey together. I'm pretty sure the 3 of us will will collaborate at some stage in the near future, and, I'm really looking forward to that. And, yeah. Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks, John. Thanks so much. Awesome. Take care.