Gwen Gordon || Restoring the Playground

Gordon began her career building muppets for Sesame Street. Since leaving Sesame Street, Gwen developed Awakened Play, a play based approach to making behavior change irresistible and transformation delightful. She has applied her insights and organizations ranging from San Quentin Prison to the MIT Media Lab, and from IDEO to Pepsi Company. Along the way, Gwen has collected a master's degree in philosophy and an Emmy Award in children's programming.

Her latest book is The Wonderful w which is the first picture book for grownups. Hey, so great to chat with you today, Gwen. Great to be here with you, Scott. Is this the first I just want to clarify something. Is this the first picture book for grown ups you've done or that ever in the history of the world. Well, being a complete authority on the history of the world,

I can say definitively, I have absolutely no idea. No, there have definitely been picture books for grown ups, and it's actually not my even my first picture book for grown ups. It's the first one I've published, though, Okay, the first one you pomplished. Well, cool, I mean I loved it. I still do love it. I love it. That's great. Yeah, I'd love hearing that. Well, let's talk about the plot a little bit of the wonderful little w But you know, maybe we shouldn't give away like

the ending or something, because we won't people like buy it. Right, So, like the basic premise, you know that we try all sorts of well, you can tell me if i'm my interpretation of the basic premise is correct after reading it, But that we try to fill our deficiency, our whole in our hearts up with so many of the wrong things that we think are going to fill us up that maybe only temporarily do so, and we very rarely, you know, we spend almost our whole lives, avoiding ourselves

and looking and examining what lies deep within? Is that a fair summation, a good encapsulation. I would add a few things, but I'm impressed. Well thanks, No, feel free to add or modifier change. That's what I got from it, And you know, it resonated so much with me because of you know, I consider myself a humanistic psychologist, and the core philosophy of human psychology is becoming a whole person and living an examined life, you know, So I just resonated with me so much. It's it was such

a wonderful book. So congratulations on it, by the way, thank you. Yeah. One of my favorit. Our teachers said told me once said, everything every strategy we have as personalities, adjusting, managing, negotiating our world, everything is actually fear of the void, and the void being the void being really the sense of our own so sort of deep hunch about our

Then this is a spiritual perspective. So you know, this won't include everybody listening, I know, but it's the hunch that we actually don't exist as a solid, separate self, and everything we're doing is trying to compensate for the sense of deficiency that comes from that basic lack of substantial self outside of our defenses against it. So that's a big that's a big leap. Oh no, and it's an existential leap. It's great. You have you come across our Bielm's work. No, oh well, you do love it,

you'd love it. And he talks a lot about you know, we have this need for belonging, but then there's like a deeper, like existential need for belonging. It's like there's

actually Carl Rogers talking about a lot too. You know, we have this like superficial need to belong but then there's this other kind of like deeper awareness of the fact that we will always be separate no matter what we do, no matter what we engage ourselves in, no matter how much we try to associate with people to fulfill that need, there will always be this existential need because we are ultimately at the end of the day, you know, dialone. It's not a very uplifting view. It

characterizes as existentialists. Yes, very well, I think the book is really and my own philosophy is not existential I actually have had directly as depressing. No, no, it's not. You know by the book that there's actually a way to experience wholeness, and it comes from really facing fully and experiencing without any resistance that sense of deficiency. Like, that's the doorway the sense of wholeness, and that's the

wonderful w turning the holes into holes. Well, reading your book made me feel better about my existence than reading exercential philosophy. But I don't know who's more right. I hope you're right. Well alone, that was worth it. Yeah, well, wonderful. You know, I'd like to back up a little bit talking about you know, you're such an interesting human being and have done so many varied things. I'd like to back up a second and go back to age nineteen

when you got your dream job. Tell me about that. Oh, well, that was the job working for the Muppets. You know, there's a story about how I got the job. There's a story about being at the Muppets. What are you most interested in? I want to know, like what that time period, what was going on at Sesame Street at that time, Like, I want to know everything. Who did you interact with? Which muppets did you meet? You know, did you meet in the Kermit, the Frog did you

have a conversation with Kermit the Frog? This is what I want to know. Yes, yeah, well those are very important questions, and I'm glad I can answer them. I have met Kermit the Frog quite have quite like intimately deeply. Yeah. I have performed surgery on Kermit the Frog. I've explored his inner world. Oh gosh, this is you know this is a g rated podcast, Gwen. Yeah, well it might comfort your listeners to know that he doesn't actually exist

from the waist down. Oh okay, we don't want to put an explicit rating on this chat then, given the biblical senses, actually quite still quite superficial. Yeah, so there were only five. So when I came to Muppets, it was nineteen eighty four, possibly three, and I'm terrible at dates, and I actually arrived. I you know what, Actually it was coming full circle. I got the job partly because of a puppet that I made that you know, I had never made a puppet before, and I decided I

would just try one, and I sent it. It It was a big bird called Clyde, And I sent the bird as if he was applying for the job, with a little note saying, you know, big book is my favorite role model. I'm ready to renest Mack, you know. And then I got the interview, and what I brought to the interview was I wrote and illustrated a children's book for grown ups, my first one when I was sixteen, called I Think In my Last Life I must have been a Rabbit. And it was for my college application.

I actually was in Holland my senior year and I didn't really wasn't that motivated to focus on my big college career. I was actually having a great time, and I thought, well, I'll write this book. And you know, they got my test scores, I got everything else. But I'll write this book if and I'll send it and if I don't get in, I probably won't go to college. And it was my first choice, early decision school actually

probably Wesleyan, which was right your alma mater. Yeah, so I got in, which you know, luckily I would not have probably gone to school. It's my only college application. And I brought the book, this book to my interview at Muppets and was wearing everything I wore I had made, so that got me the job. And they're only at the time they were they were making Muppets take Manhattan, so they nice. I loved that. I loved that movie.

Where did you work on that movie? Yeah? I made the fish in the fish scene where they're throwing fish at the theater. Yeah, of course. So that was sort of the summer job. But in the in the fall, Sesame Street season goes from September to January, so they brought kept me in to work on Sesame Street. And Sesame Street only had a team of like four or

five people. It's the only one to five people. So we were responsible for everything, Like we would read scripts every week and we'd you know, make a list of

all the things that were needed. And sometimes there were new characters that came in, and sometimes they were anything muppets, you know, like anonymous girl, you know, father, and then sometimes they involved the classic characters in costumes, and sometimes there are props like Slimy the Worms basketball court or Stuffalopagus his nose flute, or a budge just singing bananas or that kind of thing, and we just would you know, yeah, I made a made a chorus of singing bananas, and

so yeah, we would we would build stuff each week, and I was really lucky my first year. I got to design new characters, because we just wrote sketches when there were new characters and sent them up to Michael Frith, who was the art director, and he would choose the ones he liked. And my very first year he chose my characters. So they were the Rockheads. These little rocks that had little would come alive when someone walked by them. So yeah, so we would repair, Kermit, we would repair,

we would refurbish, grow over. We were like every time there was a shoot, we'd come, bring the puppets back and clean them up and polish their eyeballs and call it today. Yeah, I just Google imaged the Rockheads and I'll put a picture up on the show notes. That's so correct. Actually a shot of the Rockheads. Oh, there's hundreds and hundreds. In fact, there's a whole Muppet wiki page. Oh my goodness about the Rockheads. A group of characters

who lived on an empty lot on Sesame Street. They were created to teach the concept of what is alive and what is not? Is that true? Levy? I have to google now to see if they're the same ones, because who knows, maybe later on they they were that they were like, well, just put in your chat chat window the link. Oh good, okay. They appeared in episode one nineteen thirty nine, where they tried to decide how many of them there would be if one of them left,

with David teaching them subtraction to figure out. At the end of the same episode, they provide a rock concert doing their own rendition of the Sesame Street theme. Is this a ringing bell at all? Those were shot, those episodes weren't shot when I was there for Oh, there we go. Excuse me? Yeah, those are my characters. Yay, god, yay, that's too funny. Yes, those were my first That was my very first year as nineteen years old, and I created and designed these little Well, they should give you

credit on the wiki page they link. Nobody gets individual car Okay, that's always just well, you're getting credit now because it's on the record now at the Psychology podcast. Oh, Ed Christy, No, it actually gave credit to Oh that's funny. It gives credit to Ed Christy, who did not design and build them. Oh that is not cool. I have been I've been ripped off. Yeah, that is actually not cool. So Ed, he's a wonderful, wonderful person. Yeah. Yeah, puppets, Yeah, good. Well,

we're going to correct the record right now. We love doing that on the Psychology podcast. So let's move on in your life. Then you designed computer PlayStations for children. Is this before computers were computers? Well, no, this was like let's see eighty five eight. This was after Muppet. So it was the heyday of the media lab, you know,

when interactive multimedia was exploding onto the scene. And Marvin Minsky, who's the sort of father of artificial intelligence, and Alan Kay, one of the Apple luminaries, were there and I felt like Forrest Gump. I was like getting to be in all these places with the originators and the stars of

the field. So Alan Kay was our advisor for the Vivarium was an Apple research group that was exploring how to teach children about animal behavior, and there was a master's thesis project in that lab and they wanted to create this big furry computer PlayStation. This was when the Apple two gs was. Oh my gosh, that was my first computer. Yes, yeah, so I ended up developing on the twogs even after that. I remember hearing that from you. So you heard that from me, Well, I was, you know,

listening to some interviews that you did. I mentioned at some point because that was my first computer. Oh, I've talked about it before. I don't remember talking about it before. That's so cool that you heard that. Yeah, that was my first computer and I my grandmam bought it for me because she wanted to. She thought that I would would take to it, and I instantly took to it. I actually started programming games on it. I program this game called Mystery, but I still have saved. I have

the Apple to gs in my basement. I wonder if it's worth something. I wonder if it's worth something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we were trying to The computer was housed inside the creature's stomach. You can actually do another Google search for newby by b Ie Okay, my TV lab. It was in Stuart Brand's book. So it's just wonderful creature. And they wanted muppets to make it, to build it for them, but they were coming into some problems with

the IP and so the workshop. I had moved to Cambridge by then, and the workshop leader, Jim Morrison his name, he sent them to me. He just said, Gwen'll build it.

Just you know, she's there, no problems. So I just became part of the team, and I was building this big creature, and then I also did all the animations because it was basically like a huge mister potato Head that you just squeeze the different body parts and an animated version would appear on the screen and cycle through whatever different kinds of those body parts where there's a if you're squeezing the hand, it might become a claw or you know, a fin, or any number of things.

So you could create your own animals by sight, like mister potato Head, and then find out how they survived in different environments. And that was the way children learned. And so I did all the animations and the user and the all the UI, and and you know, just got into that world. And then after leaving the lab, the woman whose master's thesis that was, and I started at a company called Telltale Technologies, and we were creating

other kinds of alternative input devices, mostly stuffed animals. Does that seemed to be what I could do? So yeah, that was that chapter. Oh cool, you're such an interesting person, so let's let's move on. You know, you got a master's degree in philosophy. I was wondering, how have you applied philosophy have you applied do you apply it in your work? Oh? Yeah, well it was really like, you know, all these different seeds that were there as a child,

I was, you know, even at Muppets. I was taking critical theory classes at night at the New School while I was so I'd be constructing Muppets during the day and be constructing them at night and thinking really critically

about what are we really doing? What is what are messages are we conveying with these characters that were not necessarily conscious of, you know, Kermit being a reptile, you know, as the leader, a cold blooded like essentially green male, I mean white male, and the mayhem that he's able to hold, and that the feminine Miss Piggy is like femininity, femaleness occupies the entire landscape of her personality. Have you

met Miss Piggy? Oh yeah, Oh my gosh. I had such a crush on Miss Piggy when I was five years old. I've never admitted that to anyone before. Wow, I think he might be rare. Really, Miss Piggy is slightly designed to repel or scare men. You know, I didn't. I never knew that I missed that memo. I thought she was like, really fierce, Well you're in luck because she is an archetype and I'm sure that many women carry that, so you might be able to find it somewhere.

That's hilarious. Okay, okay, anyway, So I was anyway, even at the media lab, I was very much wasn't just happy making. I am happy making, but I am also really a thinker, and so I was asking difficult questions and you know, like is this really good? How we know this is? You know, what we're doing is really of service? And anyway, so it was like a wonderful thing to be able to finally focus my full attention on the question the philosophical questions that I always had.

So that really what that did was it shifted me from just being a creator to being reflecting on creating and reflecting on the deeper principles that apply to a creative life. And that's when I started actually looking to understand play, or I wasn't really looking to understand. I had a deep intuition about play like that that it had a potency that was beyond the way been you know, characterized and trivialized in our Protestant work ethic. You know, culture.

So I was drawn. Studying philosophy sharpened my tools for cracking the nut that I had always had around the sense of what is this power of play? And so I you know, that definitely shifted my life. After studying philosophy, I started teaching about I also studied cosmology. I was looking at deeper evolutionary principles and just the question of ultimacy, you know, from different through different lenses, like what what are the ultimate physical principles? And from a cosmological perspective,

what are the ultimate philosophical principles? What is happening here? And what are we here for? And how do we participate fully in this seventeen billion year old universe that gave rise to us? And you know, just what is life for and about? And what does play have to do with that? So what's the answer forty two? I don't have no Now I have no I don't have to do any more podcast episodes. There again, I got it. We're a full service podcast interview. Well, how you applied

your work to lots of domans? I mean, look, how do you help weight watchers, you know with play? Like can I play my way to lose fifty pounds, we're really bouncing around. Yeah, it's all connected. It's all connected. Is it? Absolutely is? So I was glib when I said forty two, of course, but I it's obviously you were not entirely serious about the question. And it's of course you know, it's something I've I've unpacked a lot and have and how it applies. So I've been looking at, well,

what are the insights that I've got. How can I apply the insights that I've gotten about power of play?

And with weight Watchers, I was brought into help create a more playful meeting experience and to help socialize the whole organization around the value of play, you know, which has historically been since they're also very rooted in hard science, as you know, as chonal for everything they do, they don't have the they hadn't really caught up on the hard science of play, and they always thought of play as something that was versus everything they were trying to do.

And I was really shifting their perspective to see it as via everything they were trying to do. Yeah, and did you do that with pepsi? Is that what you did with pepsi as well? And ARP and they know basic. That was the basic theme of what you were brought in for. No, each one was really different. ARP was hatching their Hatchery, which is their innovation think tank. They're

now well known for it. They took a big leap and brought themselves fully into a twenty first century innovation culture with this beautiful space called the Hatchery to innovate new products and ideas. And I was brought in to do some workshops on one of the principles for innovation,

which was fresh how to bring in fresh thinking. That was just a workshop and training and support in their general project of innovation culture and PepsiCo was I was brought in really almost purely as a thought leader on play because they had an entrepreneurial venture called Wello which they were developing for women over fifty. So I had just hit fifty, So I was like in their graduations that was like five years ago, do the math, and

I was I had. They found me. I had done a Kickstarter for film I was producing about play, and so they wanted me to sort of be the face of their culture, the play culture that they were cultivating for their market. So I would go instead of sponsoring events for that population, they wanted to create experiences for those events. So I'd go to conferences and gatherings and offer these plays workshops, and they were sponsored by Willow, which is PepsiCo. Very cool. I'm sure they benefited greatly.

I wonder if it benefited the taste of the pepsi product at all. Yeah, that this was actually a non sugar base, Yeah, yeah, I mean there's always it's a complex world. It is, it is well, there's lots of moving pieces of each organization. Yeah. The women who were spearheading this were really actually really had a shared sense as I do, of of what healthy, what health meant, and well being. So there wasn't a tension there. There was within the larger organization, but not within the group

that I was part of. Cool. Probably was more fun to work with that part of the group. So how can play save the world? I mean you talk about how you believe in the quote the gospel of play, So do you view yourself as an evangelic cist? Wait, how do you pronounce that word? Envelop? Do you yourself as an evangelist of play? You know, it's actually evolved a lot since I was, you know, spreading the gospel of play. What I've seen is that the play message

is actually getting mainstream attention. And I don't know if you can hear my pug coughing, but apologies for all. How was your pug is sounded like a human? It's a Your pug is like a lot of power there, Oh dear, I'll try to cover the mic. It's okay. Yeah. So I used to be sort of passionately spreading the gospel of play because I could. I knew that it was a fundamental force and primal survival drive but also

evolutionary drive. So it seemed to me that this was the way not only that we would find balance and reduce stress and you know, and generate creativity all the benefits that play confers, but it was also like our potentially our it was an expression of our true i'll say true nature, like humans homoludins are inherently playful. So it was like a sort of deeper you know, let us be humans, like, let's connect to this deep life

affirming drive. And that's a very particular lens for play that because it's been so pressed, so suppressed, and so you know, we are so play deprived as a such individualistic and competitive and I mean, I like to call it the proving ground. We've left the playground. We've landed on either a proving ground or a battleground. And I

wanted to restore the playground. Yes, And yet what I found, what I really saw was, you know, that message at one point was really important because it countered this strong tendency to elevate seriousness as if it's the same as value. And there were just a lot of messages that it felt important that play could counter that would restore some balance. But what I started to see was, as you know, after Stuart Brown's book which was Your Time's bestseller on play,

and it started to diffuse into the system. It started to get co opted by every agenda you know, you had what happens. Yeah, and so organizations were like, we're going to get used play to become more productive, and we have it used as you know, it's a great stress reliever, Charlie Owens works wonderful, but it's it was sort of utilitarian like and you could see that, you know, there's a shadow side to play. Play is not always

really not life infirming. Oh yeah, I'm just king. So yeah, so I was I actually started writing to it felt like the movement had gone far enough that it required some reflection and some distinctions about what kind of play actually transformed proving ground mindsets into playground mindsets, and what

kinds of play reinforce it. You know, like putting a ping pong table into a game room and a corporation which is cutthroat and competitive, isn't going to necessarily turn it into this like you know, joy life affirming, joy filled playground. It's like you can use any play, any kind of play from a mindset of proving and battling, and that it won't necessarily shift the mindset. So I was looking at the play that reinforces it, the play that opposes it, the play that reforms it, and the

play that transforms it, and they're really different. And and I even went further and was looking at well, when we used when we I've had playgroups and I was working with people who just wanted to play more, and what we saw. What I saw was that inevitably you'd find blocks, right, so you know, at first it'd be like a wild animal release from captivity. I get to play permission and games and structures and some safety and

awesome like freedom. But eventually, you know, you'd start to see people's the backlash and the blocks and the proving around the fears and the places basically because because plays is freedom, it's like any place in which we weren't free started to show up, and even the backlash of shame of like oh I shouldn't have done that, or inhibitions or and as a first layer was to play with the blocks to play, which could which helped, you

know whatever. It's like taking the part of us it's free and using it to help liberate the parts that aren't. But it essentially eventually it gets to the parts that are are just can't play with the blocks to play and just need holding and just need the soothing and like the the space to be with fairly difficult emotions. And so it became a bigger journey around, well, how do we get to liberate the playground people said that

they're living on a playground? Became really like how do we heal ourselves at the deepest level where because those are the places where we're not playable, where life is in play. So in order for life to be play it really is the path to wholeness. It's like facing all the parts that aren't that don't feel capable of playing and using play the playful part of us as a resource, you know, to the extent that we can beautiful.

I love the articles about that about how not all play is transformative and how we can, as you say, restore the playground because you say the playground is our true habitats. Yeah, but you know, in kind of when you talk about these principles or these ways that play can reinforce, reform, oppose, or trans form. I really like this notion of a single guide to when it is transformative, that being how much does it feel like you're going against the inertia of who you are and the world

or going against it? I really like that metaphor you say quote it's just a heck of a lot more fun to play Tug of War than it is to be at war with the world. What a great summation of maybe a compass for understanding when your play is being transformative versus when it's coming from a place of deprivation. Right, yeah, yeah, Well that's and the whole idea of being able to play Tug of war, play with that battling energy versus sort of merging with it and be just acting from it.

I mean, that's a really powerful step toward freedom. And actually what Stephen Porgies, the neurobiologist, was the first articulator of the whole vaguel system as a third part of the nervous system. Are you feeling with that all Vegel? Yeah, I absolutely am. Like Barbara Fredrickson has done some good research on that topic. Yeah, Stephen Poor just wrote a big tone called I think called Vagel theory. Anyway, he

describes play a sympathetic arousal without fear. So that's why you see like chase play and fighting play and tug of warplay and animals. It's like all the basic sympathetic arousal fight flight, right, but without fear, where all that tension gets released without the trauma response, without it being a trauma response. So when we I mean sometimes I'll just like tap my partner Tony and say chase me,

chase me, and it's like, oh, it's a joy. It's like this primal release, right just or when you're ready to fight with somebody, like what would be like to just shift to you know, play fighting and just get that tension up And that's the mastery. That's like being able to play with those activated states versus having to live in a world that's full of threat. And yeah, like it turns the world into a playground and then

the threat is something playable. I love it. I don't play really doesn't get near as much attention as childhood play, and childhood play doesn't get as mu attention as it should. You know, So all that is true what I just said. Yeah, but oh boy, you know, I just love this shot. The spotlight that you're shining on this well, you know, it's funny because we shouldn't be ending this podcast with this question. We have started with it. But what is play?

I mean, you write a whole You wrote a whole paper that I found fascinating outlining the inherent paradoxes of play and how we should define it. So how do you define it? Well, I'm going to give you a couple of quick ones, okay answers. So you know, play has an Oxford English dictionary. I think over twenty it might be twenty three definitions. Yeah, and one of the ones I really like is is movement like a rope has play if it does wiggle room, if it's not rigid.

So the opposite of play is rigidity? Oh nice? I like that. Yeah, And I think of the movement as a flexible response to whatever it's time for, like the capacity to respond to whatever it's time for. I'll go

with that for now. Wow. Yeah, So what is play is probably my least favorite question, Like everyone wants to know and I hate answering, Like I just I just find it, you know, because I had to go into a post rational course mode in order to actually get toward it, get moved toward it, and I, yeah, I just find that that's not an easy zone to enter. Okay, So you've written multiparticles I've written. I read all your

articles in preparation for this interview. Wrote a great article about how play is essential stepstone to healthy childhood development. So can you maybe talk about why? Sure? Well, so it's actually two angles. One was that I wanted to understand playfulness. Yeah, like, where does playfulness come from? Why are some people more playful than others? What can we do about it? Is it just like a happiness set

point where you just started luck out? Because playfulness and there's all these wonderful advantages in life, just like happiness does, and it's they're very related of course, but I was looking at, well, how does our worldview get shaped, you know, really so that we can see the world as a playground, and can we do anything about it if we aren't inherently playful? So that was yea, my interest, and so I was looking back at well, where do worldviews come from?

What are the early experiences that shape how we see ourselves and whether the world is safe or not? And

because we playd the extent that we feel safe. Yeah, dosuming that everyone would naturally be playful to some extent, I mean differently with different styles and different but in that essential way of like have of the freedom to respond to what's needed in each moment and to be able to have their full expression in relation to as much of life as possible, which is another way to see play I was interested in one of those experiences, so I saw that, you know, the earliest experiences are

the ones that are have the biggest impact on our sense of safety. And of course attachment is you know, our first our first universe is the relationship with our caretaker. So you know, this is basic attachment theory that we are internal working models, right, are created by the quality,

the level security of that attachment bond. And what I saw is that, you know, if you have an insecure attachment bond, like let's just start with the most insecure, a disorganized attachment, then you're likely to see the world as a prison. Like the world is fundamentally unsafe, there's nothing that we're not empowered. The best we could do is just you know, just manage ourselves, and I mean we disorganized, it's even difficult to do that. So it's

like everything is threatening. We don't have the capacity to regulate enough even to do that, So it's very difficult for life to be play. Yeah, when life is a prison, then the next stage, you know, an insecure attachment avoidant would be that life is a battleground, that everything's a threat. So it really has to do with the security reflects the degree of threat that we perceive as the world, and a degree of threat and security give rise to

the level of play that we are capable of. So when we see the world as when we're we didn't when we got that insecure intermittent, when the attachment caregiver was you know, inconsistent, not emotionally or even violent, then the world is a threaten we feel like we live in a battleground, and we perceive threat where it doesn't exist, so we're defended, so it actually, you know, we create

the reality. Yeah, so of course, you know, you meet someone who's defensive and you're less likely to be friendly to them, and so the world actually shows up as threatening. You know, defensive people are scary, so you get scared, and so defenses escalated, so you end up in a world that really feels like a battleground because you're seeing it that way and it's actually playing out to be

that way. I'm really simplifying, as you know, and your listeners are sophisticated and will oh yeah, I mean it's just so queer that you really love thinking about play in a really really broad, holistic sense of its impact on the whole system of human nature or not, like you said, how it's been co opted you know, yeah, yeah, I just want to just complete because when you see just the idea that when you do have secure attachment, then the world can be a playground. You know that

that then we can see realistic risk. We can perceive it when it's realistic. It's not like you suddenly a Pollyanna and everything is play, but we can sense when there is risk and it's safe to have adventures, it's safe to express ourselves, it's safe to connect, and that makes, you know, gives us more playmates and new experiences. Ambiguous experiences are threatening, So the ambiguity and the unknown that is so much an inherent part of life is actually

considered full of possibilities rather than full of threats. Yes, and Abraham as talked about defense versus growth, and yeah, you know, we limit our our growth so much from erecting our defenses, and it plays a great way to get out of the comfort zone, right, Yeah, Well, and we can play when we have enough security. So we take the level of security that we have and we can grow it by playing more. Yes, Oh yes, I

love it. I mean you do talk about, you know, getting out of our boxes to enable creativity to flourish. You say, the way you phrase it is by changing the preset radio station or turning the radio off all together, so that something new is possible. I feel like quoting you is enhancing this episode. Yeah, I'll shut up so you can just tell me about because you know, like you have so you've said, You've said on the record,

so many beautiful things, right, that. Yeah, that comes back to your work on default mode networks, right, it sure does. And that's that's the seed of a lot of a lot of the psychological play for sure. But isn't it.

I mean I was thinking about this because I did my research too, and I listened to whole bunch of your talk and interviews podcasts, and it was really interesting because I started thinking about, well, default mode network is can just be a box, right, It's it's our identity, it's our it's our default sense of self, right, so that can just be the old radio station playing over

and over again. Most of the thoughts that we have that when we're not focused on something else in a different part of our brain, are our just habitual identity creating thoughts. Yeah, identity thoughts. And that's why, like you know, psychedelics, where the default mode network gets quiet and something new

can happen, that's really getting out of the box. Or like at the end of my like the way that the book will come full circle to the wonderful w because the way that that I wrote that initial seedt for that story ten years ago and because I had this intuition and it was playful. I had a friend who lost her and her welcome sign, and I wanted to give her a gift. I gave her a W, and I was thinking, oh, hole and whole, and like she should what would happen if she fell into a hole?

She'd need a W. And you know, I had this feeling of like, there's something really interesting about the relationship between holes and holes with a W. So I was playing with that and I wrote her a story and gave her W for her birthday. And that was ten years ago, and I didn't quite know how the story ended, and I was trying to figure out how does the princess find her W? Where? Did really like, where do

we get our w's? Yeah? And I ended up going on to retreat with a meditation retreat silent retreat for six days. And I started, as I got quieter and quieter, my mind became lucid. And I know I have this tendency when I get more and more lucid, to like go, oh good, my tools sharp, Let me take it to some good problems. And so I was like started thinking about things. You know, I get quiet and then I

go off and you and think about things. And I ended up like filling sixty nine pages of my journey on this retreat writing three children's stories, and then like there's this other conventional book about playloads writing. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've got all this. And then I finally like it's almost like I, you know, your identity starts to loosen, the default mode network gets quieter. It's like new ideas come.

And I thinking of it as like in the ozone layer when you get real if you were like to travel out and or expand and you get really close to that final layer of your atmosphere of your habitual self, like right there at the edge where the ozone's really thin, and you're starting to get like in you know, I was sticking antennas out into the into the like universe from my ozone. Yeah, I get all this, I get

all this stuff right, and I go. I called it absolut looting, because you're that outer zone is like the absolute, and I would just loot it from my personality was still intact, but it was thin and it was, you know, quieter, but I just grabbed these big buckets of stuff that I get, like from from the absolute, but all the answers to my question. And then and I would go back and fill my journal. And then at a certain point, I remember thinking, wow, this journal looks like everybody else's

journal and my name isn't on it. What if I lose it? What if I what if this? You know, like this is some good stuff in here. And I started to like, go, oh, mine my ideas. My idea is, you know, which is the opposite of what's happening in meditation, right, loosening of identification. And I had this impulse like I just want to write my name on my journal so I won't lose it. Yeah, started to write my name.

You may not end up keeping this story. Yeah, And as I wrote my name, basically my whole identity just contracted right back. Sure, And I was like, okay, I'm letting it go, and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna let it go, and then I'm going to put my journal in my room. And I just finally was like, it's not worth it, Like Gwen being a Gwen is not better than what's possible if I really let that default loan network go, like it got quieter. That's very

a Buddhist of you. It was a Buddhist retreat, and I did, and it was open and it was like, oh, wonderful, that's the W. That's the W. And it was this an inspiration for the book you wrote. It was for the ending of the book. It's like I had to figure out how it is, yeah, which we won't really explicitly of it. Yeah, but you know, maybe they can fill in the blanks, but it's definitely worth getting. Well. Thanks so much for imparting your wisdom on play for

us today. I'm going to end with another one of your favorite quotes. Play is life force itself. When we can sense and amplify its most life affirming, transformative impulses, it will point us directly to the playground. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Glenn. Thank you for the pleasure. Scott. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.

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