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

Hello.

Hello.

Hi everyone.

Hello to everyone on the live stream.

Hello to everyone here in the room.

Welcome to Play a TED.

We are going to have such an incredible time here together.

Um, my name is Chris Duffy.

I am the host of Ted's How to Be a Better Human podcast.

I am a comedian

and I wrote a book all about how to laugh more every day.

But this is true.

If you were to Google me, that is not necessarily what will come up.

If you Google me,

and what I'm about to show you is very it's important for me to

let you know that this is not edited

or doctorred in any way.

If you Google me, this is the Google image result that comes up.

Now, I I love what I love most about

that is that one of them is me.

That's just my little punim in there going like, "Hey, I'm here, too."

And actually both of us, both that Chris Duffy and this Chris Duffy,

we are both so glad to be here today hosting Play at Ted.

And um this is an incredible, incredible, incredible event.

I believe so deeply in the importance of play,

in the importance of goofing around.

I'm a professional goofball.

And at the heart of this event, at the heart of play,

it said is a simple belief

that young people aren't just participants in this conversation.

They are essential to it.

And from the very beginning,

we designed this experience with youth voice at the center.

We began this initiative by bringing together more than 300 students from across the

world,

more than 27 countries.

And they shared their stories and their insights about play,

what it means to them, how it helps them to build real world skills,

and why it should be an even bigger part of how they learn

and grow.

And beyond today, this work is going to continue through TEDex events around the

world where even more voices are going to take the stage to share ideas

sparked by this initiative.

Our aim here is really clear.

We want to spark a global movement demonstrating how creative play can lead to

brighter minds,

braver ideas, and a more imaginative future for everyone.

Okay, so let's get started with our first session.

Play is a language.

Our first speaker is a human creativity expert who trained in clinical psychology at

Columbia University's MindBody Institute.

She's the co-founder of Daydreamers,

a platform exploring how creativity supports human health and flourishing.

And she's the person who coined the term creative health.

We're going to hear a lot more about that idea right now.

Please welcome Kina Bajage.

When I was 8 years old, I had this ritual.

After I finished my homework, I'd head upstairs to my room,

turn on my favorite Christina Aguilera CD, and sit on the floor,

surrounding myself with all this stuff that was supposed to make me playful.

I'd take out my Barbies one by one,

spread out my markers in every color, and then I'd wait.

And I'd wait.

And I'd wait until something felt worthy enough, perfect enough to make.

That moment barely ever came.

Ever since I was a kid,

play felt like something that I had to earn.

And when I finally did do it, I took it seriously.

My favorite game growing up was emergency room doctor.

I'd forced my younger brother to scrub in, robes on, beanie babies fully prepped,

and I was head surgeon, of course,

so there was no room for mistakes in my O.

Most people don't become play skeptics until they're adults.

But for me, even at eight, I was questioning the point of it.

So I ended up doing what any reasonable skeptic would do.

And I became a scientist.

I got my masters in clinical psychology

and spent almost the last decade studying the science of creativity.

And what I discovered surprised me because creativity isn't just a talent.

It is a core part of all of our well-being.

A pillar that I came to establish

and become a fierce advocate for called creative health.

And one of the best strategies

that we have to strengthen our creative health is exactly what I dismissed

as a kid.

Play.

That's because when we play, especially as adults,

we unlock this unique type of flourishing.

We have deeper fulfillment and stronger resilience and even more original ideas.

But the type of play

that I'm talking about is probably not what we're all imagining.

It's not just being silly

or childlike or even starting up a brand new hobby.

We've reduced play to be this cherry on top of an already good life.

But from a scientific perspective, it is much more fundamental than that.

Play is what happens anytime we choose to do something without knowing exactly where

it's going to end up.

There are no instructions we need to follow or outcomes we need to achieve.

Just two elements, intrinsic motivation

and the freedom not to know the answer in advance.

The problem is we've come to treat

that type of play

as worse than optional.

It's something that we avoid and even punish.

So much so that upwards of 70% of adults around the world today have

stopped doing it.

I first noticed this pattern

as I was interviewing thousands of people about their current relationship with play.

And I kept hearing the same thing over and over.

They told me they didn't have the time

or the talent or the right tools to do it anymore.

And when they finally did, it wasn't play.

It looked a lot like my emergency room.

Something that was scheduled and optimized with nothing left to chance.

I know this might not seem like a big deal,

like we're just having less fun, but it's deeper than that.

We are living through a play deprivation crisis.

We've systematically removed everything that makes play what it is is the spontaneity,

the freedom, the wonder from all parts of adult life

and replaced it with efficiency

and achievement.

And in doing so,

we're losing the very survival skills

that we need the most right now. things like our capacity to adapt

and imagine and even feel alive.

Play deprivation is tricky though because at first we barely notice it's happening.

We just feel endlessly busy.

But over time without play stress can compound and then burnout can become chronic.

And then we walk around as playless adults which ultimately creates a playless society.

One where our institutions can grow rigid and lonely and polarized.

But we can change this though, not even just for ourselves,

but for future generations, too.

Because play isn't something we age out of.

It is a lifelong trait.

Which means no matter how invisible it might feel, we can always restore it.

And how we go about doing

that is much simpler

and more expansive than you'd think.

At my company, Daydreamers,

one of the things we got extremely curious to figure out was finding the

optimal way to play.

Are you noticing a trend about me yet?

We studied all kinds of people, executives, postal workers,

stay-at-home parents from 18 to 85.

And we looked at how they played, not in a lab,

but in the texture of their daily lives.

And as we analyzed the millions of minutes of creative behaviors

that we collected through pictures

and psychologically validated assessments,

we found the opposite of my hypothesis.

Play wasn't some list of actions we could add to our calendar.

It was an approach.

The people who became creatively healthy were doing something differently.

They were playing all the time in all these parts of life, thinking playfully,

expressing themselves playfully, even noticing when it happened around them.

And as they began to embody it, their lives transformed.

So while I wish I could stand here

and give us one play prescription to follow,

that would be the antithesis of what it is.

What I can do

though is paint a picture of what a playful life could look like

because we don't need more stuff.

We just need to start injecting it back into how we already live.

And the three places to start are during work, before sleep, and in public.

Let's start at work

because most of us get stuck in this linear task oriented thinking,

churning through to-dos, and in back-to-back meetings.

But neuroscientists have found

that the spontaneous imaginative thinking that's underneath creative play lives in a different part

of our brain called the default mode network.

And that gets activated when we do things we don't normally consider productive.

Playful people mind wander.

They daydream.

We often call that laziness, but underneath the surface,

our creative brain is actually hard at work connecting all these disperate ideas

that don't make sense yet.

Even Einstein swore by this.

He credited his most innovative ideas not to doing math behind a desk,

but to thought experiments.

And right now, protecting our nonlinear thinking matters more than ever.

And that doesn't happen through doing cringy ice breakers.

So next time you see Mark staring off into the distance during a meeting

or even you want to look away from your inbox,

celebrate it because your thinking is starting to play.

Okay, that sounds doable, right?

But what happens when we get home from work?

Well, most of us feel exhausted.

So, we reach for ease.

We scroll, order food at the click of a button.

We want our lives to be frictionless.

But our play and our lives need friction.

There's actually a type of positive stress called ustress

that comes about when we do things

that require effort from us.

That's why physically playing

or making things with our bodies actually expands our energy

and even our perception of time.

But we've come to engineer the friction out of that too, though.

We think playing at home is perfectly completing a page of

that adult coloring book

or following a YouTube tutorial to a tea.

Real play, though, is freer than that, which can feel uncomfortable at first.

It's experimenting with a bunch of different ingredients without a recipe

or doodling in the margins of your notebook.

It can be that simple.

That's actually exactly what I was doing when I had my own creative breakthrough.

Normally, I'd get home from work and try to relax.

Or if I was feeling extra adventurous,

I'd take out my notebook and try to write something profound.

Neither of which are very playful.

But one night while I was writing,

my pen moved to the left

and then it made a circle

and then a bunch of random shapes

and patterns started to flow.

And while I did feel uncomfortable, I was also incredibly liberated.

And when I came back to reality and tried to make sense of it,

I thought of my 8-year-old self sitting on the floor of her room waiting

for something worthy to make.

And I realized in that moment that she, like so many of us,

got it backwards because we don't need to wait for play to feel good

to do it.

Doing it in the face of resistance and discomfort is how we begin.

But we can't just play alone at our desks or in our rooms.

We need to play in public, too.

The last and most insidious sign of play deprivation is cultural.

It's when we don't just dep prioritize it ourselves,

but we actively punish it in the world.

Silencing music in our parks or calling leisure time lazy.

Almost a hundred years ago, philosopher Johan Heisinga warned us about this,

suggesting that when a culture loses play, it can become brittle and polarized,

unable to cope with change.

I know that might seem familiar and maybe even scary,

but know that play is inherently contagious.

Research actually shows that just being in proximity to people doing it can motivate

us to do it,

too.

So, we don't always need to be the main character.

We can just amplify it when we see it.

I'm sure you've noticed this happen before

when a crowd begins to form around a musician.

But most of us end up racing past.

So, next time, I want you to take out your headphones

and listen for a moment.

Maybe be the first to laugh or clap or join in.

Because when we make play visible, it allows our communities to come alive, too.

I know that even these small moments of play can feel like an act

of rebellion in a world that's convinced us doing it

as adults is unnecessary.

And often times, they are.

But it wasn't always this way.

Since the beginning of our species, we have been making these beautiful, weird, funny,

interesting things for no bigger purpose at all.

Anthropologist Ellen Desayak actually has a name for this capacity.

She calls it making special in her work studying early human societies.

She also kept noticing an interesting pattern.

Every culture, without having spoken to one another first,

kept adding these playful touches to the most ordinary aspects of their lives.

They decorated their tools with intricacy.

They made clothes and filled them with beads and shells.

They danced and told stories and appreciated beauty for no functional or productive reason,

just because.

So this exact capacity to play, to make special isn't just inside of you.

It's wired into our entire species.

It's always how we've stayed human.

How we've bonded and adapted and even made meaning in life's most difficult moments.

And I see that as our responsibility to keep that part of ourselves alive.

So we need to play again in any form in every part of life.

Not necessarily because it will lead us somewhere better,

but because we are human and humans play.

Thank you.

>> Thank you so much, Kina.

Oh my gosh.

Thank you so much.

We are Today is all about making special.

And speaking of which, um, how incredible is this stage?

These are made out of actual Lego bricks.

That's so cool.

Um, okay, our next speaker is not just famous online for his art.

He has had gallery exhibitions.

He has collaborated with major brands.

And he's had his works shared with the Prince and Princess of Wales.

And before you start thinking, okay,

surely this is someone who's already due to retire

and probably have a major career retrospective at the end of his life.

Nope.

He is only 16 years old, known online as Doodle Boy.

He is an incredible artist.

We are so lucky to have him here with us right now.

and I will introduce him in one moment.

Okay.

Um, we are he's going to be doing a a live drawing.

So, we're you have a real treat here.

Um, please welcome straight from Australia, Joe Whale.

When I was younger, I used to get told off in class for doodling.

I couldn't stop.

My teacher would always stop me from doing this.

And it was really worrying because as a creative person,

it's something that I do naturally.

After a few weeks at my art class,

I was booked in because I was having this trouble at school.

My teacher suggested something unusual.

There was a big empty wall in a local restaurant.

She asked them if I could draw on it.

They said yes.

So, I started filling the restaurant wall with my artwork.

People would come in and watch me while they were eating.

Photos started appearing online.

Then the local newspaper wrote about it.

And suddenly, people all around the world were talking about this kid who couldn't

stop doodling.

That moment changed my life.

I wasn't even trying to be an artist.

But the important thing is how it started.

It started with my imagination and parents who didn't disregard but embraced my passion.

It started with the freedom to just draw.

And that's what I want to talk about today.

Because the world is very different than

when it was when I was first doodling 10 years ago.

Today, it's possible to type prompts into AI, make anything, and feel creative.

But I believe there will always be value in letting our imaginations be the

true driver of our creations.

Because imagination is like a muscle.

The more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

But if you don't use it,

it gets weaker and your body will rely on something else to do it

for you.

Creativity is not encouraged today.

It's not given value.

So it's easy to turn to the tools right in front of us

and get an instant result.

But you don't learn by going straight to the end.

You learn from the journey.

Everything begins with a thought, an idea, a meaning or a vision.

That's your imagination, the beginning.

And that beginning influences what you do from that point.

It's freedom.

Imagination is the first step.

Then direction flows through the creation.

You're letting yourself literally wander wherever you wish the freedom to go anywhere

because that first step is coming from you

and not something else.

What I can see is we'll be reliant to replace something we all need

and all have.

We'll be handing it off just because it's easier.

And that worries me because for everyone growing up around AI,

they'll see it as normal to sacrifice their unique perspective,

becoming more and more shaped, even defined by what they can't control.

I'm just going to show you something visually now.

I often start my artworks with a simple shape.

Thinking something spiky here. and then big eye like this.

Then I'll add some other detail.

Often when I'm creating in the moment,

it helps me feel very free

so I can just flow with each character

and each line.

In New York, as I've traveled, I've seen lots of people on skateboards.

So, I'm going to draw one of them.

And I'll add the wheels in there.

And then I often like to add icons like a heart.

Feel like it's very simple but very effective.

And then I love these kind of eyes like an alien like that.

Then I'll keep this going.

The arms and then the legs as well.

And with this character, I'll just start with another simple shape like so.

Fill in this.

This guy's not very happy.

And then what I like to do to balance an artwork is just add

lines and shapes to just fill out the space

and movement lines which give life to a piece. something I always use.

I hope we can all take a step back from AI

and embrace what makes us truly unique. our ability to convert figments of our

imaginations and turn them into impactful realities.

We face this choice every day.

So, let's embrace this uniqueness, this imagination,

and the creativity that brings us all together.

Thank you.

Heat.

Heat.

Hallelujah.

Nice work to all those kids.

Great work kids.

And thank you so much to designer G.

Lee who created this project inspired by his child's creativity.

Um, also a really cool opportunity is um during the breaks

if you felt inspired by Joe's talk

and you want to do some doodling of your own,

we are going to have the ability for you all to be doodling yourself.

So, look forward to that.

Um, okay.

For our next talk, we are going to shift gears a little bit.

Um, you're going to hear all about the importance of children's play,

but these are children who are living under some very difficult circumstances.

Our next speaker, Iram Mariam,

is the executive director of the Brack Institute of Educational Development,

where she champions a simple but powerful idea.

Every child deserves the right to play.

She has worked with children in Bangladesh, Tanzania, Uganda, the Philippines, Sierra Leone,

and beyond.

Um, Iram's work and responsibilities meant

that she was unfortunately not able to travel here.

So, we filmed her talk in advance

while she was still in Dhaka. um

as I know that you are about to see the work

that she is doing is

so powerful and so important.

So please join me in welcoming Iram Miam.

In August 2017 the genocide in Myanmar had exploded overnight.

The military were killing Rohingya people setting their villages on fire.

This was part of the ethnic cleansing of the Rohhinga people.

The women and men who had escaped were now flooding across the border carrying

infants and young children on their back.

Within four months, over 850,000 people crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh in a

town called Cox's Bazar.

I am Bangladeshi and I live in Dhaka.

I have spent my career working to make sure children have access to play

when everything else in their lives has been in chaos.

I have worked with children for over three decades now through BA,

the world's largest NGO.

While the Rohingya refugees were arriving by the thousand in Bangladesh,

I got an urgent call from my BA colleague.

He told me I had to go visit the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar

and see how the children were doing.

I thought about how much those kids had been through.

They saw things that no child should ever see.

I wondered how would they ever recover.

I believed play might help them reconnect with what they lost,

their culture and their sense of home.

I believed play might heal them.

And what we discovered over time was

that it was not just any kind of play

that would help them heal.

It was specifically play from their own Rohhinga culture that helped them feel pride,

gain confidence, and experience joy after being violently forced to leave behind their home.

So, I'll go back to the beginning.

After that phone call in 2017, I traveled to the camps in Cox's Bazar.

Aid workers had set up safe spaces for the children.

I found children drawing guns in their art.

That was not unusual.

But I saw something that surprised me.

Someone had donated Scrabble sets and Uno cards for the children.

It was a generous gesture, but the children had never seen these games before.

They didn't know the rules.

They didn't speak the language.

Even the adult facilitators didn't know how to play.

They were arranging the scrabble tiles into patterns

because that's what made sense to them.

Standing there, I thought, there's got to be a better way.

These kids were used to wide open spaces with trees and flowers.

And now they were crammed into a refugee camp with a million other people.

Every shelter was a copype of the next.

Bamboo frames, tin roof, blue and black plastic tarp held back the monsoon rain.

The air smelled like still water and human waste.

But none of the kids ever complained and there were no signs of frustration.

Instead, some kids were just withdrawn, others were restless.

Some wouldn't engage with kids or with adults.

This was painful to watch,

but typical of kids who have gone through such extreme conditions.

But even the kids who were withdrawn would come alive

and express more joy

when they were playing in a certain way,

the Rohhinga way.

So for the next few months,

we watched them and we asked lots of questions.

What did you play in Myanmar?

How did you play it?

How did you decorate your home?

Why?

What does it mean?

Children, parents, grandparents, and siblings would show and tell us from the kids.

We heard the stories their grandparents told.

We heard rhymes that their siblings knew by heart.

We watched physical games that their parents did when they were little.

And we watched them make traditional Rohhinga art,

the kind of art that would be hanging in every household back home.

And from that we built what we now call the humanitarian play lab.

Small welcoming spaces for kids three to five decorated by the Rohhinga community itself

with hand embroidered cloth hanging from the ceiling

and artwork of flowers

and homes and animals. images

that the children recognized from a life they were forced to leave behind.

Each play lab is facilitated by young Rohingya women who spend up to 5

hours simply playing with the kids.

Each play lab is also supported by other women trained in psychosocial support to

help kids manage their emotion.

At 9:00 a.m. those kids leave their home to walk to the play lab

through narrow passageways.

It takes them only three minutes to step into a different world.

While still in the camp, a Rohingya woman, their play facilitator,

greets 30 young children.

She asks, "How are we today?

Are we all okay?"

Here we are like friends and siblings at home.

Respect those who are older and love those younger.

Then she asks, "Who wants to lead the rhyme?"

One child steps forward to lead.

Hands are up, bodies move, they chant, they play, they jump, they giggle,

they listen to stories, they draw.

One of the girls is N.

N is just 8 years old. 5 years ago, Nur was undernourished,

withdrawn and shy.

She was physically weak with continuous diarrhea.

When N started coming to the play lab at the age of three,

she sat quietly.

She watched.

Then she learned the rope game from the facilitator.

The game she plays is a traditional Rohingya one.

Two kids hold a long rope,

flipping it back and forth while N leaps over it without touching it,

reciting a rhyme while she's jumping.

She's tracking the rope.

She's controlling her feet and she keeps the words coming all at once.

N kept playing.

As she played, she became stronger.

Her mother noticed that N became less shy and confident.

And once Noo learned it, her mother encouraged her, telling her to jump higher,

go further, be bolder.

When you watch her jump rope, you forget for a moment where you are.

She doesn't just jump, she flies.

Now N walks around the camp with a rope in her hand.

Just in case she finds a space to jump.

She may still be shy to speak to strangers,

but she will jump in front of any audience.

That's not a small thing for a kid who used to fade into the

background.

Nurse's mother played this game as a girl.

This is not a Bangladeshi game.

She says we Rohinga call this Roshi Fal Dani.

This has made my daughter stronger.

She's not scared anymore.

She has courage.

Then there is Muhammad.

Muhammad is about 7 years old.

He lives with his parents

and four siblings. and he is known

as the seesaw boy in his neighborhood.

This game is not the seesaw that we imagine.

The Rohhinga seesaw is where two kids wrap their legs around each other like

acrobats and swing together going up

and down.

At the play lab,

he learned something that was even more important than the skill to balance.

During the game, Muhammad learned

that he needs to be careful

while playing the seessaw game. one wrong move

and the other kid will get hurt.

Children learn to pay attention to someone else's body before their own.

So, he prefers not to play with the younger kids,

not because he doesn't want to,

but because he's concerned that he might hurt them because of his strength.

Playing taught him to pay attention to how others might feel.

He became more thoughtful of his mother and his younger siblings.

When he gets biscuits in school,

he chooses to bring it for his younger siblings instead.

And he cleans the house

and washes the pots

so that his mother can get some rest.

He hopes to be a teacher someday.

Now, let's talk about Tuhinur.

Tuhinor is four years old.

As a 2-year-old, she was shy and quiet.

Other children teased her and called her fooly, meaning fat.

She never responded.

She cried silently to her mother.

Her mother Yasmine worried how she would raise her daughter to be more assertive.

When Yasmine became a facilitator at the play lab, she brought Tuhinor with her.

Soon Yasmine noticed that Tuhinor would be the first to raise her hand to

lead the Kabia,

a traditional Rohinga rhyme with hand movements and body gestures.

Tuhinur learned the entire rhyme

and when and how to move her body

and when and how to add hand movements.

She now leads the cup beer.

She stands at the front reciting the words in a clear loud voice

and moves her hand

and body in a way

that the other kids follow.

Some of those following her are older.

She doesn't seem to notice.

Leading the kabia meant doing this perfectly so that others could learn and follow.

She became the lead at age three.

Tuhino loves leading the rhyme

so much that she will practice at night with her shadow on the bamboo

wall and dance with it.

Yasmin says Tuhin is bold and no one can tease her anymore.

These are just a few examples

and we've been running the play lab since 2017 reaching 50,000 children across 350

humanitarian plays in Cox's bazar.

We've also used this approach in the Rhino refugee camp in Uganda.

We've been working on it for the last 5 years

and we'll be scaling

and setting up 150 playab reaching 63,000 children in Uganda.

I believe this work really matters.

The play lab helps children to get ready to enter school feeling confident

and proud.

When I visit the camp now,

parents say shukria or thank you for recognizing Rohingya play.

The children here didn't choose to be refugees.

They didn't choose to leave behind their home and where they belonged.

But through play, we've helped them rediscover their own culture, the Rohhinga culture.

And in doing so they showed us something extraordinary.

Their ability to find confidence,

joy and pride even when a place is so unfamiliar.

And that is something that every child deserves.

Not just the children in Cox's Bazar.

Every child everywhere deserves the right to play their own play.

Thank you.

We actually have uh Iram live on video stream with us right now from

Bangladesh.

Thank you so much for

that uh beautiful talk

and and thank you

so much for for being here with us too.

Um, I'd love to know what's your own personal relationship with play.

>> Well, I was raised by a mother who was

so playful and she really believed in play.

And so, she would tell me stories of the largest fruits

and the brightest flowers.

And she showed me how to climb trees.

And on a rain day

which would be rainy

when it was raining she would say let's go

and play outside and she would take me to the gardens

and say let's roam around with the butterflies

and so you know in my childhood you know she never stopped me from

playing I could play non-stop.

So when I grew up

and I became an adult

and then I joined Bragg the NGO the founder was Sir Fuzley Abed

and Sir Fuzley Abid did groundbreaking work for children who were vulnerable in health

and education and so one day sir Fuzle Abed asked me

so I am what do you think of play for younger kids

and I absolutely jumped at the idea

and so with that vision

then I started Ed working on play in Bangladesh

and lot of my colleagues started working on play in East Africa

and I play worked on play in Bangladesh with my some of my colleagues.

So we were working in Bangladesh

and a lot of my colleagues were also working on play in East Africa

and all of us

while we worked we really recognized

that play was absolutely lifechanging for all children

but particularly for children who were vulnerable

and so I'm very grateful to my mother for having a childhood where I

played so much and I'm very grateful to Sir Abid for letting us work

on play.

So, my own relationship with play is that I'm very grateful.

>> Well, we're very grateful for you and for the work you do.

And I I hope you can hear the applause

that you've gotten here in this room.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Aram.

And and thank you again for being here with us.

Um, all right.

Our next speaker, our next speaker is the only award-winning artist

that I've ever met who can also absolutely dominate in a slam dunk competition.

He is a Harlem Globe Troder and a beautifully nuanced,

talented mixed media artist whose work has been shown at Art Basil Miami.

There is really no one else like him.

Please give a huge welcome to Maxwell Pierce.

GUYS, HERE it goes from level seven.

Can I see that Zeus?

>> Thank you, man.

Yeah, ONE.

That was me shooting a basketball off of a 230 ft New York City

building.

It's certainly not your typical basketball court.

I am a member of the Harlem Globe Trotters,

a legendary exhibition basketball team that is credited for integrating the NBA,

popularizing new moves like the alleyoop, and creating so many others.

These are the new moves that have advanced the game,

but they've also given joy to the people that come and watch us perform.

And that right there is precisely how we have lasted for a hundred years

while also earning a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Getting to this point in my career certainly was not a straight line.

I've always struggled with highlevel sports coaching.

There's a certain culture that has excessive cursing, yelling,

and also a hyper seriousness that can really stunt your growth.

Although we were playing sports, ironically, we weren't coached not to be very playful.

I was a creative kid who loved art, but I was really, really shy.

So, the constant confrontation with my coaches was always robbing me of my creativity.

I learned that there was a seriousness in respecting the quality of the game.

Whether it was basketball, football, baseball, or cross country,

all of my coaches emphasized honoring and respecting the essence of their sport.

And that meant taking every drill

and every exercise seriously

and not doing anything

that will challenge the traditional way of doing things.

This is exactly what led my high school coach to telling me to stop

trying to dunk the basketball.

But ironically, it was my playfulness

that got me to this point in my career.

So, here's where I've landed today.

And this is what I'm so excited to share with you all.

Play is the most important ingredient in every person and every industry's evolution.

I am an athlete

and an artist and I have witnessed how play can break rules to improve

both of these worlds

that I live in.

So just imagine if play, creativity,

and a little bit of rulebreaking was in every industry.

There once was a time in basketball where dunking was frowned upon

so much that the NCAA banded for 9 years.

Once that ban was lifted, the popularity of the game skyrocketed.

This context reminds me of my coaches yelling at me to stick to the

fundamentals all because I decided

or had the audacity to try

and dunk the ball one time.

Thankfully, I didn't listen to them

and I got more

and more comfortable with it.

And over time, I was able to land my first dunk contest.

With a lot of work,

I was able to build a global reputation for dunking the basketball.

I began to experiment with the boundaries of this.

I would incorporate things that we didn't normally associate with dunking,

like with a dog >>

or catching a baseball.

or catching the ball without looking from someone else who's not looking.

>> Oh my god.

Every time I approached this with a playful mindset,

I was rewarded not only with advancing the game,

but also with the opportunities that I dreamed of as a kid.

There were several video games

that I used to love to play like NBA Live

and NBA 2K,

and I had the opportunity to feature my dunks in both of them.

I've also had the opportunity to feature my dunks in GQ magazine

as well as Sports Center top 10

and eventually received an honorable mention for an SP award.

Unlike what my coaches constantly bickered about,

being a glow troder requires much of the opposite.

So much of what we love about the game today,

a lot of that was at one point deemed

as not fundamental or non-traditional.

There's a beauty in balancing seriousness with play.

For example, if I decided

that I wanted to do something

and I actually accidentally made a mistake,

there is a way that I could brush that off.

When a globe charter makes a mistake,

they can have it be overlooked because of how they playfully embrace its direction.

They recognize that something went wrong,

but they actually welcome the unfamiliarity that comes with that new position.

So, for instance, if I try this trick right here

and I accidentally drop the ball,

I can use the momentum from that mistake to grow it into something new.

What I've learned what I've learned is

that in order to get to

that point,

you have to be able to roll with it

because otherwise you'll stop before you you're ever able to discover something new.

And that is actually how we are able to stumble upon a new concept.

As I mentioned before, I am also an artist.

In fact, the artist side of me came before I was ever a basketball

player.

Basketball amongst other sports has allowed me to have an ongoing relationship

as it impacts my practice

as an artist.

Sports have given me the tools to identify voids in

and around my life

while also giving me a platform to fill them.

Again, I was a really shy kid,

so art was my way of expressing myself

when sports didn't give me the opportunity to.

I used to create drawings of my favorite anime characters.

I would paint pictures of animals.

And over time, I started to focus on people with real stories.

Some of these experiences

that I've had with basketball have allowed me to gain a new perspective.

One day, I decided to cut up some shoelaces

and put them on a canvas.

I wasn't totally satisfied with it just yet,

but I knew that I had something significant there.

Using this as my medium has allowed me to communicate my identity through my

pieces.

This is what it looks like up close.

One of these signatures that's constantly through my work is using pieces of equipment

that are a part of my personal journey

as an athlete.

For example, sometimes that's cut up basketballs from a past Globe Troder game.

Other times that's tennis rackets from my childhood.

>> And sometimes it's just shoelaces

that I wore when I was doing something important. play has given me the

flexibility but also the vision to see these materials

as something more than just what we use on the court

or on the field.

All of these items, they have stories behind them.

They have connections to the people that use them.

Whether it's the tennis ball that bounced several thousand times to bring people together,

or it's the spinning basketball

that brought smiles to

so many people's faces around the world,

or if it's shoelaces that I wore on a bad day,

but I knew that I needed to keep moving.

Play is what brings all of these things together, figuratively and physically.

The world's brightest thinkers, engineers of evolution, they all play too much.

Seriously, thank you.

Thanks.

Give Maxwell another huge round of applause.

Wow.

Thank you so much.

Um, in all seriousness,

I just want to say it is such an incredible honor to be in

the same space as such talented

and uh,

beautiful people.

And um, one of the real cool things

that we have going on in the break is one of Maxwell's newest art

pieces will be on display

so you can see it up close

and personal.

Um, this is the conclusion of session one.

And one of the things that makes played incredible,

it's incredible for so many reasons,

but one reason is because it is not just happening in this room.

It is also happening online where they have their own amazing hosts

that are going to be conducting exclusive interviews,

playing games, showing TED animations, and revealing behindthe-scenes moments.

So, if you're watching the live stream,

you will get to see interviews from guests like incredible people like Simone Girtz,

uh, Andrew Yaffy, and others.

And we will see you, if you're on the live stream,

we'll see you back here for session two.

So, live stream, I'm gonna hand you off to my colleagues in the studio.

>> Thanks, Chris.

And hi, live stream audience.

I'm Alexandra Panzer and I just caught a basketball.

>> And I'm Alex Rosenthal and I didn't, but I would like to try someday.

>> I believe in you.

>> Now that we're off the stage,

things are going to get a little weird and wonderful.

>> Yep.

We're going to Well,

the main stage is going to keep the big ideas flowing.

We're going to be hanging out behind the scenes with some of our favorite

creative minds.

We're going to have conversations, games, experiments, a live performance,

and probably a little chaos.

I'm going to be playing games with some creators

and luminaries and seeing where curiosity takes us.

>> And I'm going to be sitting down

and chatting with some of your favorite creators,

people who are celebrating play in their work online and off.

>> So stick around because we're just getting started.

I'm so excited to introduce our first guest.

Simone Yet is a Swedish inventor and YouTuber and the founder of Yet Studios.

Simone, >> thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Also, what a buffet.

>> Oh, yes.

Please don't eat them.

>> No.

>> Uh there is one edible one in there,

but you we'll we'll see if we can find it.

Um, we're going to play a game and I'm also while we just chat.

Um, so the so we're calling this game Brictionary.

It's basically Pictionary with Lego bricks.

So we're each going to draw something out of this hat

and we're going to create it for each other.

>> Okay.

>> And um, how do you how do you feel about multitasking?

>> Good.

Good.

Good.

Good.

Good.

I mean, if there's anything constantly being on our phones have taught us multitasking.

Okay.

So, we're drawing >> a note and then drawing in Lego bricks.

>> Okay.

Yes, exactly.

>> How did you come up with this idea?

>> Um, I don't know.

It came to me in a dream.

Okay, this can be a >>

Because it's funny because I before I started my YouTube channel,

I actually gave um

or did a project with Lego

when I was in advertising school

and one of the warm-ups

that we thought of was doing Pictionary with Lego bricks.

Yeah.

>> Was it just like this?

>> Yeah.

>> Did it work?

>> It was just like this, but a lot more screaming.

>> Should we scream?

>> Yeah.

It was just because it was like a team thing

and everybody had to guess.

Um >> uh so yeah,

>> I um I don't have the most skills at building out of Lego bricks.

So, uh >> you're in luck because I do.

>> I just found a really good piece.

Okay.

>> Um I'd love to also just chat while we do this.

Um so, >> and in that the the theme of the event is play,

>> um I just want to talk about games and play and everything.

And I feel like you have one of the most playful design processes >>

that I've ever seen.

And I'm just really curious about the role of play in in how you

create.

>> Oh, dude.

It is it is really like I was not I played a lot

as a kid and

then I was an incredibly ambitious teenager

and really lost my touch with the play in a lot of ways.

Like I I was

so duty driven and

then I realized that like enthusiasm is a way better fuel than duty.

I think I'm kind of ready for you to guess.

Okay, put it up here so that the audience at home can guess.

>> I'm going windmill.

>> Yay.

>> Yeah.

Okay, >> we did it.

>> That's very good.

>> Yeah, but I realiz >> try another word.

>> Enthusiasm is a way better fuel than duty, but to keep your enthusiasm,

it's like it's not a skill that we really learn.

And I think play is one of the things of just like being free

form and setting the bar really low.

I think for me the problem was often like setting the bar really high

and letting my perfectionism get in the way.

So now I'm just like, you know what, just do something.

It doesn't have to be great.

Oh, this one's a hard one.

>> Yeah.

I'm also I don't think this is going to work.

Um interesting.

So what did you what did you play as a kid?

>> Uh I mean I feel like there's a way

that adults imagine that kids play

and it's like mom

and dad.

Mine was like, "We are orphans.

We need to harvest the organs of the other orphans to survive."

Like, it's a lot of just playing despair.

I don't know.

>> Oh, I have a 5-year-old and and we're just always orphans.

>> I don't Yeah.

And I feel like it's like the Disney complex as well,

cuz I think it's the thing of like you're a kid

and you have to figure it out on your own,

where it's if you have parents, you're like,

why wouldn't I just go to my dad?

>> Yeah, exactly.

It's immediate conflict and it sets up stakes.

>> Um I'm looking for a torso or a head.

>> So, okay.

So, when you start >> Where's a head?

>> So, like where when you're starting to create something new,

>> are like it seems like you play with material a lot.

It seems like you play with design.

Is that is that fair to say?

>> Yeah.

>> I think it's okay.

Wait.

Sorry.

I'm ready for you to guess another one.

>> Um Okay.

Put it Put it here just so >> Yeah.

This is teenytiny for all of this.

It doesn't stand up on its own, so I have to hold it.

>> Okay.

Wait.

And then I need to Okay.

Interesting.

Um, body horror.

>> Worm.

Worm.

>> Um, snake.

>> No.

>> Uh, esophagus.

>> It has a head.

>> Well, yeah.

That's why I thought the the pink thing was the esophagus.

Uh, wave.

Um, dolphin.

I think I need more.

>> Ah, damn it.

>> Okay.

Sorry.

>> I'm disappointed in you.

>> I I deserve that.

>> I probably did a bad job.

>> Okay.

Well, here I'm going to try mine.

Uh, color is meaningful, I will say.

And I'm also Okay,

I'm gonna put it here for a second

so we can see it up close.

Um, it should have a head.

>> It should have a head.

>> Well, I think this thing this thing is a head.

>> It is.

>> Okay.

And then I'm gonna I'm gonna play with it.

>> A bush plane.

>> No.

No.

I mean, it it is you're right that it's flying.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, and color color is meaningful.

>> Color important.

>> Oh.

Oh, okay.

>> Here.

Wait.

I mean, not really throwing up, but >> Oh, dragon.

>> Yeah, there you go.

>> Yay.

Okay.

>> Okay.

I need a new word.

>> Sorry, you were asking me a question, and I'm not good at multitasking, apparently.

Okay.

Right.

Design and material.

And I mean, for now, a lot of my projects start with a problem.

So, it'll be like >> glasses are annoying and they fog up.

And then I start thinking of, okay,

is there another way you could do it?

I think for me I Oh, I wonder if this actually will help you.

Uh novelty and uniqueness uh really matters.

So I want it to be a take like my ideal project is a

take on an everyday object

that you haven't seen before.

So like rethinking these objects uh

and how to do them better

or get them to do a different job.

Okay.

What about this now?

I wonder if the hair helped.

Um, oh man.

Please, if you are in the comments, please uh help me out here.

>> And there's so much blue around.

>> I mean, is is this a humanoid thing?

>> Yeah, it's one that you're very familiar with.

>> Is it a character?

I'm very familiar with it.

Is it a specific person?

>> No, but it's living in the water.

>> A a mermaid.

>> Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, great.

>> Great.

>> That's perfect.

Okay.

Okay.

You're talking about um design

and everyday objects and I want to talk about jigsaws a little bit

because we've both done wacky jigsaw projects recently >>

and do you want to describe some of the interesting things you've done with

jigsaws?

>> Yeah.

So, so, uh, this is once again comes to like the uniqueness

that I seek for the things I do.

And I think that is honestly part of my perfectionism coming in

because I'm like,

I won't allow myself to do what just other people are doing

because I'm like,

yeah, but then how can I justify taking up space in the world?

So, in some ways, it's like me setting the bar really high for myself.

But, I love jigsaw puzzles.

I think they're so fun.

And I thought, what

if you had a puzzle where almost every piece was an edge piece?

because usually you start with the rectangular outline of your puzzle,

but if every piece is an edge piece,

you would need to have a different technique.

So, we have developed this um set of edge piece puzzles,

which basically is like an outline

that snakes around and that's mostly two piece pieces wide.

So, it pushes you to do something differently.

And I think that is really really fun of just like, okay,

what if everything that you know about jigsaw puzzles doesn't really apply here?

So, I I've done one of them.

I did the the Ant Hill one, and I loved it.

Um, and my 5-year-old also really enjoyed doing it,

and like I love that it tells a story.

>> Um, >> so with the my Jigsaw Game, Pandora's Legacy, um, the ED,

you can't really start with the edges.

Like, it's a similar situation where it's sort of breaking the the like, okay,

do the do the frame first.

>> Um, and one one of my colleagues

that made him very mad

because he was like,

that's where I start.

Like, just give me the edges.

Um, what kind of responses have you got from people?

>> Oh, I get the juiciest, angry, happy reviews.

>> Yeah, >> I realize that it's like, yeah, it's people who are just like,

"This was so hard.

I yelled through all of it."

Uh, five out of five stars.

>> Amazing.

>> So, uh, yeah, it's it's a lot of people who are upset

and thrilled that it's difficult in a different way.

I mean, your puzzle was incredibly difficult,

but for all the >> the clues and stuff, I got about halfway through.

>> Okay.

Okay.

There's some cool stuff at the end, too.

>> Oh, damn it.

>> Actually, yeah, I there's some like mechanical things

that I want to tell you about at some point

because um just I think your brain would would enjoy those.

>> Um Okay.

And so, you also have a all-white puzzle with one missing piece.

>> Yeah, we actually took that out of our catalog.

>> Um gift to humanity. pieces.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My one of my first products

that I did was an all-white puzzle with one piece missing.

So, you got 499 out of 500 puzzles.

And I think that was also like it was kind of commentary on perfectionism.

And that I thought it was really funny

that like if a puzzle misses a piece

or is missing a piece,

it loses a lot of its value.

But what if it was sold >> intentionally incomplete?

And also, I have a jar,

a big jar in my workshop that has everybody's missing pieces.

>> Oh.

>> So, it's like kind of just the most benign super villain.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like has their souls.

>> Yeah.

I have all their missing pieces.

>> So, it's it's sort of like exquisite torture in two ways.

One, you have no image.

What do you think about constructing with with the the puzzle box?

Like, do you >> I don't look at the box.

Yeah.

I'm hardcore.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

And and was that part of the intention there

that you can't like it's all white.

There's no box to look at.

>> It's just all

and it's random cut

as well which makes it >> I guess um >> it's kind of it's

a little bit of a minimal take on this.

>> Yeah.

>> I'll face it toward the camera >> scale.

>> Uh this is um one to 100 maybe.

>> I don't know.

Actually I'm not very good at estimating.

Um, >> maybe this should let me switch the order of these on it.

>> It's like, what is it?

What is it?

>> Okay.

I'm also just going to um act it a little bit.

>> Lighthouse.

>> Yeah.

>> Oh, yay.

Spot on.

>> The acting.

>> Are you eager to finish what you're building now?

>> Oh, I don't have one.

I'm just rebuilding.

>> Oh, you're Oh, I'm so sorry.

I should have given you something.

Okay.

No, it's all good.

>> You want to play another game?

>> Yeah.

Okay, we're gonna play some So, Ted, we we we make games.

>> Um, and do you want to play a logic game or a word game?

>> Word game.

>> Let's do it.

>> But also, English is my second language,

so >> that's okay because we're going to play together.

It's not going to be too hard.

It's going to be fun.

Um, so this is a game called Letter Brew.

>> Okay.

>> And the first part of Letter Brew is Are you familiar with word letters?

>> Uhhuh.

>> Where you change one letter at a time in a word.

So, so we have the word melt

and then we um the clue is asteroid blank.

So, >> asteroid belt.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, we change one letter in that.

And then, um, here, let me I'll zoom this a little bit.

Please play along at home.

Please put your answers into the comments.

Um, okay.

Every time a blank rings, an angel gets its wings.

>> Every bell.

>> Bell.

Very good.

Um, charging animal in the Lamborghini logo.

>> Charging.

Oh, is it's like a It's like >> Yeah, bull.

>> A bull.

Oh, yeah.

No, I thought it was a Oh,

I thought it was a cat animal or >> I thought it was too.

I If I didn't have those letters,

I I would have said like puma or something.

>> Um, okay.

So, we have three of these to make.

Feel poorly.

And I haven't I haven't done this um level before.

>> Uh I think it's ale because it's because it's like >> feeling.

>> Okay.

Deep frying liquid oil.

Nice.

>> Hooting bird.

>> Owl.

>> Owl.

>> That's fun.

>> Uh hard precipitation.

I think it's the first letter that we have to change.

>> Oh, I don't know.

>> I think it's sleet.

>> Sleet.

>> Yeah, there we go.

Piece of paper.

>> You don't think it's hard enough for precipitation?

>> I I don't know.

Sheet.

>> Sheet.

It's harder than like your average precipitation.

>> Yeah.

I thought sleep was like um halfmelted snow on the ground.

>> I think it's the freezing rain on the ground.

>> Yeah.

>> Being a ha coup.

>> Um buying animal >> sheep.

Okay, so this is where things get wacky.

Um, we we made three words, >> okay?

>> And there are three transformations

and our goal is to change each of these words into the same final

answer.

So for one of them, we're going to do a rhyme with it.

Another we're going to add a letter, an anagram,

and the last one is going to be um whole into part

as in like if it's bull,

it could be a part.

It could be a horn, for example.

It's one part of it.

>> Um, but we don't

but like part of the game is figuring out

which goes where. add a letter

and anagram.

>> And I don't actually know the answer.

>> Please againird put your guesses in in the chat.

>> Rhyme.

>> Um, okay.

Part of part of a sheep is fleece.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh, bull has horns.

>> Owl is okay.

>> Beak.

>> Beak.

>> But that doesn't rhyme with sheep >> or bull.

>> So, wait.

So, we were trying to try to find one part of one of these

that rhymes with one of the other.

>> Yeah, one of these.

Yeah, exactly.

One's gonna go into the rhyme bucket.

>> H like >> um >> and what's this going to be the anagram one?

>> Wool.

>> Um >> bull wool.

>> Wool.

Wool.

>> Bull.

>> Bull.

Wool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You nailed it.

Okay.

So, uh sheep is the whole one to part.

>> Bull is the rhyme.

>> The rhyme and you add an an O to wool

and to to owl

and get wool.

>> Oh, great.

>> That was amazing.

>> Whoa.

>> We did it.

>> Hooray.

Okay, that excellent, excellent work.

>> Um, we finished exactly three minutes.

Okay, another word puzzle or uh logic puzzle.

>> Logic puzzle.

>> Okay, awesome.

>> Um, this is Have you ever done uh like nonograms or pickross before?

>> Nope.

>> Um, this is a logic puzzle form.

I think we'll do Let's do this one.

Um, where the numbers on the rows tell the two means

that two of these are filled in in the row.

Okay.

>> And in the columns, it's the same deal.

Eight means that eight are the eight of these are filmed in filled in.

>> Um and if there's two one one

that means there's two filled in some number of x's a one some number

of x's >> and

so you can just fill it in sort of piece by piece

and like okay nice place to start was with the zeros here.

>> Um >> and

then and then for example like we can do this eight

because this is 10 high

so we know these are all filled in.

>> Okay.

Um, we kind of nice little ASMR sounds.

>> Seven will be everybody but one.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, you can sort of like count down from the top.

Seven.

>> So, these are already filled in by one.

>> Yeah.

>> Right.

So, those count Oh, they're one one.

Yeah.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

So, we've done our one one.

Um, so now we can do like this four for example.

>> Oops.

I did X's.

Do you Would you like to steer?

>> No.

You happy?

>> Yeah.

I'm I'm happy to just watch you.

Um, so we could do one there because that's two and one one.

>> I see.

Well, we don't know which of these two the two is going to be,

>> right?

>> But with this, we do know there's a two here.

>> Okay.

And then we can do this one, too.

>> What do you think it's going to be?

>> So, they're all picture.

Like, it's going to be a picture.

That's why I love these.

These are some of my favorite logic puzzles

because they're a picture in the end.

And in fact, for this one, it's all an image from a TED animation.

>> I don't know.

It's a giraffe putting its hand on another giraffe's neck.

>> It's like a comfort giraffe.

>> Saying yes, it's going to be okay.

>> You're not as tall as I am, but that is okay.

>> That kind of giraffe in my life.

>> Um, okay.

So, we've got one.

One.

So, that could be either there or there.

>> Yeah, I think we can do the seven now.

Yeah.

Right.

>> Seven.

>> And then two can be either there or there.

>> Wow.

This is I'm I'm like not sure how to calibrate my brain to do

this.

>> Yeah.

It also >> 221.

So this one has to be >> Yes.

Perfect.

And then we can continue this one.

Make that across.

>> And then I guess just that one.

>> What is it?

Oh, it's a music.

>> Yeah.

Music notes.

>> Yay.

That's fun.

Wait, so are these all games you can play online?

These are games that you can play daily on ted.comgames.

I know.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

It's really It's really fun.

I >> feel like everybody has their own little game widget.

And I'm so I have to break Sudoku on my phone

because I go too hard on it.

>> Really?

>> Yeah.

>> Like how hard are we talking?

>> Hours.

>> Yeah.

>> If I Yeah.

>> Just like one Sudoku after another.

>> Uhhuh.

>> So, okay.

So, and not to knock Sudoku, I like Sudoku,

but at the end of Sudoku, you just have a grid of numbers.

And that's why I like this one.

Like this has always been this was actually my gateway into like puzzles.

Yeah.

My mom got me like a book of like of paint by number

that that goes by a bunch of names

that the games magazine put out

and then like it's

so satisfying because in the end you've made pixel art.

And in fact for this game um we like the constructors are all tattoo

artists.

>> Um and so we just get some like nice fun art in our

lives >> that you can get tattooed on your body later.

>> And I I have every time I saw the level >> Yeah.

You just do.

You can see my arms.

>> It'd be pretty cool.

>> That's so That's so tough.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, it's really really tough.

Yeah, >> I know.

That's what I am.

>> Yeah.

>> Um well, Simone, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been such a pleasure playing with you.

Uh you did really great with the the Lego bricks.

>> I'm sorry for shaming you for not kissing my mermaid.

Was that I could have done a better job.

>> That mermaid like I think needed to see a doctor.

>> Yeah.

No, she she'd lost her arms and torso, but she finds a torso.

>> Yeah.

Yeah, she's very >> She was She was pure pure uh pure in the

the wave of >> She's a mermaid on GLP1.

She's very skinny.

Just a worm.

>> That's the world we live in now.

>> Yeah.

>> Um but thank you again.

And um so uh next up we have um Alexander is going to be

back where um with an unmissable interview with the CEO of Dude Perfect.

But first, we have a TED animation

that is um that is uh about one of the best games ever made,

especially if you're ever in a restaurant

and you make eye contact with a random baby.

I think we've all been there.

And uh if you haven't guessed what it is,

you'll see it in a second.

>> In Italy, it's called Joo.

Palestinians say, and in Japan, it's Ba.

But in every language, the response is usually the same.

Peekab-boo is a near universal source of laughter

and connection for infants

and adults.

It's the first game that almost everyone plays.

So, what is it about this goofy game that babies love so much?

While infants develop at different rates,

many cognitive and motor abilities emerge in a certain order.

For example, while 6-month-olds can typically grab things

and then promptly drop them,

walking and talking generally begin around 12 months,

this timeline was first formally charted in 1936 by Swiss psychologist Jean Pia.

And while most modern researchers agree this process is more fluid than Pia believed,

the early developments he identified are key for understanding peekaboo.

First is face processing.

This happens almost immediately.

Newborns as young as 2 days old can recognize their caregivers faces.

Then around 6 to 10 weeks, babies will begin social smiling.

This is when they notice nearby laughing

or smiling faces and start to mimic them.

At 2 to 4 months, they may begin to understand cause and effect.

And finally, between 4 and 7 months, they learn object permanence.

Pia described this as the understanding

that people and objects continue to exist even

when you can't see them.

So before this period, out of sight can literally mean out of mind,

making hiding your face akin to a magic trick.

Before object permanence, this disappearing act can range from confusing to pleasantly surprising.

But by 9 months, these developments are working together for peak peekaboo performance.

At this age, infants can focus on the game longer,

predict the timing of the reveal,

and even look for the hidden object or person.

And since infants learn about the world through play,

Peekab-boo is one of their first teachers.

In one study, 11-month-olds were shown a barrier,

the bottom of which was hidden behind a screen.

Then researchers rolled balls and toy cars behind the screen,

removing it afterwards to show

that the toys had either stopped at the barrier

as expected or somehow gone through it.

Infants shown these seemingly magical toys showed more interest in them afterwards,

even ignoring new objects in favor of the toys that challenged their expectations.

The social expectations Peekaboo develops may be even more important.

The game features several hallmarks of what researchers call social play.

Eye contact, turn taking, and joint attention.

These skills are the foundation of human conversation.

And since it's a conversation, what the adult does matters.

Just as caregivers learn to read their infant's cries and verbal cues,

babies learn how adults respond to their behavior.

Some play researchers call this back and forth serve and return interaction.

And peekab-boo is a prime example.

This call and response structure is also why some psychologists describe peekab-boo

as a baby's first joke.

It's an interaction where the format is reliable, but the content is surprising.

As other motor and cognitive abilities develop,

this foundation of social skills and object permanence informs various kinds of play.

Once kids begin walking and talking, peekab-boo usually evolves into hideand seek.

Though their hiding isn't usually very good at this age due to poor impulse

control and a lack of theory of mind.

This is the ability to understand, imagine, and predict other people's mental states.

Without it, a child might think they're hidden simply by covering their own eyes.

After all, if they can't see you, shortly you can't see them.

Once theory of mind develops around age 3 or four,

kids can begin playing pretend together.

All occupying a shared imaginary world,

though even the most cooperative pretend play is often sprinkled with peekaboo style surprises.

By ages five and six, language expands to inform more playful negotiation,

leading to games with more complicated rules.

After this point, most kids favorite types of play are more determined by their

personalities and interests than their cognitive development.

But no matter what play they pursue, as adults,

they'll likely wind up playing peekab-boo again.

This time from an allnew perspective.

Hello and welcome back to the studio at PlayT.

I'm Alexandra Panzer and as part of our day celebrating all things play,

we are going to be sitting down

and chatting with CEO of one of the most popular channels on YouTube.

I'm talking 65 million subscribers popular.

Uh we're here with Andrew Yaffy, CEO of Dude Perfect.

It's sports.

It's comedy.

It's in a word antics.

And Andrew helps make it all happen.

All right, Andrew.

>> Hi, Andrew.

Hi.

>> Thanks for joining us.

>> Thanks so much for having me.

>> My pleasure.

Um, okay.

So for anyone who has like just turned on the internet today,

can you tell us a little bit about uh Dude Perfect

and how you got involved?

>> I would love to.

Uh Dude Perfect started 17 years ago,

the very dawn of the internet >> before I was born.

>> Yes.

Uh early early YouTube days,

five friends who were playing in a backyard at Texas A&M University.

>> Uh throwing standing on the roof of their house,