How to Be a Better Human - How to make social risks pay off (w/ Ben Swire)

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Many company cultures can feel stagnant and uninspiring, says designer Ben Swire, whose job is to help people take creative risks. Ben shares why icebreakers, compliments, and competitive bonding games can undermine workplace camaraderie. Later Ben shares how he finds success leaning into creativity and provides five activities for more meaningful connections.Host & GuestChris Duffy (Instagram: @chrisiduffy | https://chrisduffycomedy.com/)Ben Swire (Instagram: @now.and.ben | Website: https://www.benjaminswire.com/) LinksHumor Me by Chris Duffy: https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcLSafe Danger by Ben Swire (https://www.amazon.com/Safe-Danger-Unexpected-Connection-Innovation/dp/0306833824/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0)https://www.makebelieveworks.com/Follow TED! X: https://www.twitter.com/TEDTalksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tedFacebook: https://facebook.com/TEDLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferencesTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks Podcasts: https://www.ted.com/podcastsFor the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscriptsLearn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. This January on the podcast, we've been thinking about different ways to bring more laughter and humor into our lives, inspired by my new book, Humor Me, which is out now. And this week, we're going to talk about taking creative risks. Now, risk-taking is a big part of finding the funny, but it's also a really big part of coming up with any sort of new, interesting idea, or innovation, or also just succeeding in business or as an artist or just living a life that's not totally born.

and predictable. If you want to do any of those things, you need to get comfortable with some level of risk. The problem is taking risks is so uncomfortable. I hate risks. I wish I could just be safe and secure and cozy all the time instead. But as today's guest, the designer Ben Swire is going to tell us that's not a long-term solution. That's not something that you actually want when you think about the consequences. Here's a clip from his new book, Safe Danger, about how creative risks can lead to deeper connection, innovation, and a lot more fun in our lives. Before we begin, I need to risk telling you something. It may sound like exactly the wrong thing for the author of a book about creative activities to admit, but it's the truth, and I think

it's important to be honest about it. I would never have gone to one of my own workshops. Not voluntarily. I am an introvert's introvert and have never been one of my own workshops. I have never been one for big group activities. I would rather gnaw off a limb than do another skit in an offsite. Party games make me run for the hills. Karaoke gives me the hebi-jeebies. But here's the thing. I would have been missing out. I know this because whenever I roped people into coming to my sessions for the first time, they left saying things like, I actually really, really enjoyed that. And though that was, of course, the polite response to give. I know that they meant it, because I never had to rope them in again.

They came back on their own. They made time, brought their clients, invited friends. They published articles about the workshops. They said the sessions were one of the defining highlights of our community's culture. So, yeah, I would have been missing out. This book is less about convincing you to try something new, and more about sharing what convinced me. I'm hoping it will make it easier to understand the people you spend your days with

and to be understood by them. I'm hoping it will help you pinpoint what you have to say, why it's worth the risk to say it, and how to shout it from the rooftops with confidence. We're going to be back with more from Ben in just a moment, but first, a quick ad break. Today, we're talking with Ben Swire about connection, creativity, and how to get more comfortable taking risks.

Hi, I'm Ben Swire. I'm the founder of Make Believe Works and the author of Safe Danger. I spend my days helping teams connect with each other in real and meaningful ways. So, Ben, you are an award-winning designer. You are a former design lead of IDO. And then you went on to co-found your own team-building company

that's called Make Believe Works. And now you're the author of a book that is called Safe Danger. So let's just start this conversation with you defining what safe danger is. Fair enough. Most people think of safety and danger as opposites. But I really like to think of them more like dance partners, that safety gives us sort of solid footing and danger gives us movement. So if we only chase safety, we stagnate. If we only chase danger, we burn out. So safe danger is sort of the

emotional sweet spot between the two, where people feel secure enough to leave security behind, but still stretched enough to grow. Because that's that zone where, connection and creativity and belonging really thrive. Is this for people who are like only artists and creative types? Is this for people who are trying to start their own business? Like, who needs to be in the space of safe danger? It's the foundation of all of the team building workshops that I design. So it was initially meant to help basically corporate people set aside their professional

facades and see each other for the actual human beings that they are to really connect and really get to know each other. But pretty quickly, we started getting feedback from clients on the side, just coming back saying that they were using it at home and they were doing things at their family reunions and how useful it was. So it really quickly became something that I discovered was useful for anybody who was ready for something new but afraid to rock the boat. It was that sort of middle zone where they could try something, find that out that it was okay and keep going. And for a lot of people, that meant sort of rediscovering who. they were and who they'd left behind over the years. And for other people, it was moving forward into something new that they'd always hoped to be. So it can do lots of different stuff.

So something that I love about your work is that you're always really focused on like the practical ways that this can be implemented. And you have tons of different exercises that you've done with groups and with individuals to help them get into this place. Will you tell me some of your favorite exercises that you've done that create safe danger? One of the easiest ones that we often use as sort of an icebreaker or getting people going is we ask people to think about the person without whom they wouldn't be sitting here today. Somebody that set them on the path to who they think of themselves as and are proud of. So maybe it was the aunt who told you that your voice mattered or the teacher that told you to get up and try again, whoever it was. And we asked them to think about that story and then retell it in two ways with words and with pictures, with a single phrase.

and a single iconic image. They'll draw it on cards that we stack up and make a whole sculpture. Sometimes it's just we have it put them on up a button and they can go talk to each other about it. The point is to make them think through and distill this iconic person for themselves and then we get them talking about it with each other.

And what we found is that's really easy for people because they think they're talking about somebody else. But what they're really sharing are their own sense of values and purpose and who they hope to be. and who they may be showing up as. All of that starts coming, spilling out when they talk about this person that influenced them.

So it's a really great way of cutting through the small talk. If it's an offsite, instead of getting everyone to talk about, you know, how their flight was or something like that, this actually helps people understand where their colleagues are coming from. This feels already like it's a very meaningful question. And you're talking about stuff that's deep and central to identity.

But like, why is it? Is it better to do that than to talk about how the flight was getting into the city where you're doing the offsite? What we found is that when people connect better as people on a personal level, then the professional work just soars exponentially. When people can trust each other with bad ideas or with dumb questions, when they can offer up something half-baked with the confidence that they won't be judged, but rather that someone will take it and make it better, or that they can ask for help without worrying that it flags them. is incompetent or that they can offer help without somebody being offended. All that stuff comes from a level of trust. And trust has to be earned. Most people are afraid of not showing up as their perfect best self at work. And what we found is that when people connect as people, when they're okay showing some of their flaws, that trust makes all the difference. It really grows in a powerful way

that allows them to take risks that they wouldn't normally risk. Most workplaces celebrate people for what they do, which makes sense. We're trying to give them a moment to celebrate who they are because that's what underlies everything so that they feel confident that even if they stumble, they're not going to be abandoned and left behind, that they can make mistakes,

they can take risks and still be part of this group. And that takes going a little bit deeper than just the superficial stuff. and what your resume says. I think one of the things that was really striking for me in reading Safe Danger is how you talk about the ways that we can sometimes misunderstand both safety and danger. You have a really beautiful passage towards the end of the book talking about how a lot of what we perceive as safety actually can be quite dangerous, that you can get stuck in a situation

because I'm just doing the same thing that has worked in the past. And now I'm trapped because it's the safe thing to do because I know that has worked. And yet many people end up feeling like I don't want to keep doing this forever. And yet what else could I possibly do? Yeah. I think one of the biggest mistakes that businesses and people and families even make is confusing safety with comfort. Comfort is about making it easy for everyone to fit in. It's about sticking with what works.

It's about, to a degree, it's about confidence and control that you know what's coming. But real safety is. when people can stand out and still belong. It's not about removing friction. It's about creating enough trust and connection that the friction is productive, that it lights up possibilities that would have been missed otherwise. One of the ways that trust and connection plays out is in being willing to actually explain on a deep, sometimes vulnerable level,

what is actually happening. You have this exercise that I love that explicitly does this that's called the Five Wies. It's kind of a thing that a lot of times kids do with their parents. which is just asking why over and over and over again. And by asking why five times in your exercise, you get to a place of more understanding because no one can really plan that many answers out. So you have to get creative in how you're responding. But can you tell us more about why asking that question, why five times makes a difference

and how you use that philosophy maybe in your own life? I mean, yeah, the five whys is just a codified way of refusing to take the obvious answers and pushing and pushing and pushing and until you get somewhere that surprises you. What has always fascinated me is the idea of questioning the obvious, of turning assumptions inside out, of seeing where we come from. And that often means asking dumb questions or asking the same question again and again and pushing a little bit deeper. But that's where innovation comes from.

That's where surprise comes from. You don't get that from the answers that everybody knows. you get it from asking the questions no one thought to ask. And that takes work to see those questions, to see the seams in our lives that we've learned to gloss over. So activities and exercises like the Five Wies or another one that I love that Chad Aberrod was sharing with me in the book is that he just walks down the street and questions the things he sees. Would he know how to repave a sidewalk if he's? he needed to. Would he know how to plant a tree? All these things. And it begins to unravel all of the assumptions that we take for granted as we walk through our lives. I think that in a lot of my own personal experiences in groups, the formal icebreaker is something where it's like, okay, say your name and something that starts with your name. So it's like, I'm crazy Chris or I'm Chris the cat. And it's just funny to me to think about comparing those kinds of activities, which are so incredibly

surface level with the type of activities that you push people to do, activities where they're getting vulnerable, they're getting really open, they're thinking more deeply about who they are and what matters to them and they're connecting with other people. These are exercises that can be really profound. So I guess my question is why do you think we even do the crazy Chris type of activities? Why do we end up with those as icebreakers or in group settings? I think because it feels fun. It feels fun to the people planning it, certainly. And I think with team building, they often think about it as just, well, let's get together.

We'll have some fun together, and that's enough. And I am all for fun. I love fun, but it's not enough. It's not enough to connect because, especially in a business environment, but in general, you're not all the same type of person. There are some people that are going to jump in and can't wait to mime things or dance things or make stuff and that's great.

But there are other people, if I'm being frank, like me, that are introverts and shy and not just a little cynical. And those sort of things are anathema. It's just the most excruciating experience to have to get up and do like a role-playing skit for me. So part of what I've tried to do

is figure out a way that you can bring in all these different types of personalities and still make it meaningful for them. So you don't have to be somebody that loves to jump up and down, but if you are, it will still work. And if you are somebody that is quiet and shy and wants to talk about something different, then you're still welcome in that as well. So creating a level playing field is really important to me because I think bringing people together, everybody has a different sense of fun. But if there's a sense of purpose and connection that you can unlock with that, and fun is just the sort of mechanism that unlocks that, then everybody walks away feeling like, huh, that was worth my time. People saw me for who I was.

The goal with the activities that I design is that everybody can get vulnerable without feeling threatened or intimidated, and that everyone can feel seen without worrying about being judged. because if that happens and they walk away, then everybody finds value in that connection in that moment. You and I first crossed paths many years ago because you and my wife, Molly, worked together at the design firm IDEO. And something that really struck me,

I mean, even secondhand just hearing about it from Molly about IDEO, is that there's this real deliberate sense that what made this company special and what made this a special place to work was the way that the, the culture functioned and the way that the types of people that worked there and the fact that you were going to work with people who were exciting and surprising and felt like they could bring their whole self. So it was never just like, I answer the phones. It was like, I answered the phones and I'm working on an incredible novel that's going to become a bestseller. That's like a real example of a person. So it is indeed. How did working at a place like IDEO lead to the ideas of safe danger? Ideo changed my life. And that is no small statement. It absolutely. changed the way I looked at the world, the way I looked at work, the way I looked everything. I'd spent much of my career before that on Wall Street working in financial

marketing for blue chip firms and more or less felt like, oh, that's how work goes. You know, you work with some nice people, you go home, fine. And then I went to IDEO and I saw people doing world-class work, but instead of being motivated by either the stick of layoffs or the carrot of bonuses. These were people that were motivated by connection, by trust, by joy, by passion, curiosity. And it was like going from Kansas into Oz. It just, how is this possible? And one of the things I noticed early on was that the variety of people there, while they were all curious and they all did, they were all amazing and I loved spending time with every single one of them, they had to learn how to be a part of that culture.

wasn't just that IDEO looked around for people that were amazing and brought them in and that's what made the place amazing. They brought in people that were great at what they did and were open to learning. It took a little time for people to learn to trust other people, to learn to figure out how to be vulnerable with this and not show up as your best self. I was there about 10 minutes before they asked me to write a presentation for one of this big iconic client that they had. And I did what I'd been taught to do in my older jobs, which is I asked for, okay, give me the brand guidelines. Let me see three or four past decks so I understand what IDEO's voice is. And my team lead just sort of looked at me and said, that's what we hired you for. Your voice is IDEO's voice.

Just go. Do what you want to do. Right. What do you want to write. And having that sort of trust coming from a place that before that, to get a postcard into the mail took 60 pairs of eyes to sign off on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was just amazing to see the degree of trust and connection. And so to get back to your question, IDEO, I just started taking apart what I saw, trying to figure out what made this place tick.

And pretty quickly, what I sort of drilled down to asking the five-wise sort of approach was that these people trusted each other, that that was the key piece. It was trust and connection. It wasn't just that they were imaginative or playful or fun or, it was. It was that they trusted each other. And so while I was there, I started a series of what I thought of as sort of creative play dates. But it was always packed in with this idea of you're going to open up and share something of yourself through these methods. And that's where safe danger really evolved. It sort of had to tinker with a little bit to find out what was too vulnerable and what wasn't and where was that sweet spot and what could bring in all the different personality types that we had at IDEO because there were a lot of introverts that did not want to.

get up and do a song and dance. And then there were a lot of extroverts that did. And so finding a balance where everybody could show off the best parts of themselves. Took a little time. But that's where Safe Danger came from those workshops. They eventually spun off. Now I have my own team building company called Make Believe Works that employs all, you know, all these activities.

And that's, I mean, to a great degree sort of God's joke on me. I'm going to make you an introvert and shy and you're going to end up loving, running things we have to stand in the middle of a room and get people to play with pipe cleaners because I don't want to do what I do, but I love what I do. And so finding that balance of like, no, this is just an opportunity for growth. I do want to ask just because we've been talking about your work in a design firm, how do you view company culture as a design problem? It's been interesting because while I was the idea, we were often brought in to big companies to help them change their culture.

They wanted a more innovative culture. They wanted to create an innovative lab. And so they brought us in to sort of share the recipe with them and help them do that. And one of the things I noticed over time was that a lot of those efforts started with a bang and ended with a whimper. And I think one of the big pieces of that that they weren't willing to address and think through was actually how they rewarded people. So they wanted people to behave in a certain way. They wanted them to take more risks. They wanted them to lean into things.

But they still rewarded them only for successes. They still rewarded them on an annual basis, which meant long-term projects got no love. There was a real disconnect there in how people were willing to think in new ways and what they were afraid to give up. So as a design problem, you know, it's about going in and seeing which behaviors are motivated by what emotions. So wanting innovation, wanting all that is it's curiosity, it's hunger, its appetite, its ambition. Sticking to the old ways of rewarding people and compensation, all that, is fear. It's fear of what your competitors might do. And so if I were to address that, those are the two things that you need to sort of think through and pull apart.

One of the insights that I've gotten from doing the work that I do is that design thinking in corporate settings, which has gotten a lot of blowback lately. There's been a lot of articles written in Fast Company about how design thinking's time has come and gone. But the complaints that they have about why it didn't work all tend to come down to a lack of trust, a lack of connection, a lack of vulnerability. That just because you have the recipe doesn't make you a chef, that you need to build some of that intuition, some of those reflexes. And that's, I think, what safe danger can do. It allows for that connection, that trust, those things to be there. So if I were going to approach you as a design problem, it would be how do you infuse safe danger into the company rituals, the onboarding, the weekly meetings? How do you make a place where you are expected to ask dumb questions, and that's taken seriously, where you're expected to push beyond the except, all of that, where it just becomes the air that you breathe?

I mean, let me turn that right back around on you then. How do you do that? I think of it in two different ways. I think there's the sort of daily rituals and then there's the big focused times. So the big focused times are off-sites or annual meetings or team-building activities. And those are just really, as I said, there's sort of great pivotal moments of telegraphing what's important to the organization, bringing people together. And you just have to do it in a way that it feels worthwhile. So it's more than fun.

and it's definitely not just more work. It's that balance. One of the key things that I've found to make that work is actually to take competition out of it. A lot of team building leans into competition because it's a fun and easy way to get people excited and their pulse goes up and that's lovely. But if your goal is real authentic connection, competition inherently divides people. It pits them against each other. It encourages them to show off. And then most people lose.

So it's not a great mindset to be in if you want people to lower their guard and be open. So that's why we lean into sort of creativity and conversation to get those connections. But that's our approach. We're going to take a quick break, but then we will be back to talk so much more about Ben's approach right after this. And we are back. One of the parts that I had really underlined in your book Safe Danger is when you're talking about facilitation and what facilitation looks like. to actually get to these places that you're trying to get people to. And I thought a lot of the tips that you had were,

were to me, very counterintuitive. They weren't necessarily what I would have expected. And the biggest one for me was conversations instead of compliments. So I'll just read this paragraph here. This is on page 196 of your book, you say. One of the hardest things for me to do when facilitating is resist the urge to praise quality. When someone creates something that really knocks my socks off, my instinct is to say so, to say, wow, that's incredible.

it's so beautiful or insightful or clever or smart. But what I found is that this sort of praised as two things that I don't want. First, it shuts down the conversation. Maybe the person feels proud and that the work speaks for itself. Or they feel that they got lucky and don't know how to react. Or they feel humble and are wary of going on and on about themselves. Either way, the conversation is always richer when I'm more curious than complimentary. The second thing it does is set off a barrage of comparisons in everyone else's head.

Is mine as beautiful? Mine is better than that one. Mine isn't so good. So how can I follow that? Again, it closes off the openness of the conversation. We don't want anyone to be keeping track in their heads of who is more loved than anyone else. And then I'm going to skip a little bit, but it says, leading with curiosity instead of judgment, allows everyone to feel equally valued, equally seen, equally loved. I found that to be a very surprising tip for facilitation to not tell people that they're doing a good job.

It is really hard because that is just for a lot of us, it's our normal compulsion is, oh, you did great. and you want to reassure people and you want to encourage them. But part of what I do when I'm facilitating is remember that that's not what this is about. I'm not here to make them feel good necessarily about what they've made because what they've made is just an excuse. It's an artifact of a process. What I'm there for is to get them to open up and get them to connect. This piece of this insight or whatever is is something that I learned from a kindergarten teacher.

It's part of an educational philosophy called the growth mindset, which is much more about asking, questions than answering them. It's about leading with curiosity. What this kindergarten teacher had done was that she just noticed that when she asked them about their art, instead of saying, oh, that looks lovely, she would just say, tell me more about that. All sorts of things that she hadn't expected came spilling out because they weren't trying to live up to anything. They were just explaining and explaining and explaining. So when I use that in my workshops, it really does put the emphasis on people's thought processes. And, their emotions and their creative problem solving. And that's what they come out and share. And that's what everybody else needs to hear. They don't need to hear that someone did a good job. They can make that judgment for themselves in their own head. What they need to hear is, what they need is for the internal to be made external. And so asking questions allows for that to happen. And that allows them to understand that, oh, when Jenny solves problems, she leads with intuition. She just puts a

bunch of stuff together and then takes out the stuff that didn't work, whereas Bill is very methodical and he had a vision and he put this, da, da, da, they both may be beautiful. And if I say they're both beautiful, that's all you learn. So I really try to make sure that everything we do, when we have time with people, I want all that time to be worthwhile and vulnerable and valuable for them. So why can't you just go right into asking your employees or your boss to share more about themselves. Why can't you just say, like, hey, let's take more risks and be more vulnerable? Why do you have to practice it in this kind of other way to do a drill that is, instead of going A to B, you go A to Q to get back to B? The truth is that these things can't be dictated. It's not about bullet points. It's about an

experience. You have to feel these things to be more vulnerable, to be more open, to be more collaborative. You know, it's not something you can read about a manual. It's a little bit like, you know, swimming. Like I can give you a book on Michael Phelps and you can read that all. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to float in the water. You need to do some simple things first. You need to learn to blow bubbles. You need to learn to get your face wet. Things that don't feel like what everybody else is doing. Nobody, you know, the swimmers that you're looking at aren't blowing bubbles. They're just doing their thing and you want to get right to that. But there's a step by step process that you have to go through. And trust and connection and those sort of things are built

through shared experience. They're built through practice. It's a muscle. And it's something that has to be built up and then maintained on a regular basis so that it becomes second nature in the way that you react to things. What I found is the more you have to think about it, oh, I need to be curious now. That means you're still learning. So going right at it, I found doesn't teach anybody anything different. I love that. They were going to react the way that they already did, or they're going to clam up and hide if they're somebody that's shy. You've got to make them feel comfortable enough

to behave in a different way. There's this real, I think, beautiful goal that you're pushing groups of people towards, which is the idea that there's a right thing to say and a wrong thing to say, that you could be correct or make an error is most of the time not true, that that's, in fact, not possible

and that you just need to connect with the other person and to say the thing, and that you want to build a place where you can, you can trust that whatever you say will be fine because it is the fine thing to say. There's a tension there, though, with work where it is possible to make a mistake at work. It is possible to have a big glaring typo in an email or a work presentation can go badly and you cannot get the client. So can you talk a little bit about why you want there to be this kind of elimination of the idea of correct and incorrect. amongst the people you work with? Yeah, and that is absolutely true. There are consequences in the real world,

but I think the difference is it's a long-term versus a short-term mentality. The short-term scarcity mentality says, everything needs to be perfect, everything needs to be perfect, everything needs to be perfect, every single time, because otherwise we're doomed.

And the long-term approach says, we're going to do our very best, and if we lose that client, we're going to learn from it and do better the next time. And what that does is shift your thinking, especially for developing talent and getting the most out of the people that you have working for you. Because if they are terrified of making a mistake, they will do the same thing over and over and over again and nothing will move forward. But if you have made space for them to take some risks, to be themselves, to try some stuff that may or may not work, a little bit of gamble, a little bit of let's try it and see what happens,

opens the possibility for new discoveries, new products, new approaches, new things that can surprise your audience, whether they be clients or purchasers or whoever that is. And that, to me, seems to be the heart and soul of innovation. All that stuff comes from friction. It comes from the collision of different approaches. It comes from pushing past the obvious. So, okay, we've been talking about this in, in like a work context, in kind of maybe a corporate context, or at the very least, in a large organization. How are these skills and these ideas practical in personal relationships, maybe in like a family culture as well? Well, I mean, I can talk about my family because I always test most of our activities on my kids. Please do. Yeah, please tell me.

One of the things that you run into with kids is when they're young, they won't stop talking, and they're going all over the place, and they're not focused. And when they get old, they won't say three words to you because they're teenagers now. And so what these activities can do for both age groups or both approaches, depending on who your kid is, is it can give them a focus to really talk about something specific and give them some guidelines so that you're learning something about the interior life of your kids that, I mean, as a parent, I can't think of anything more interesting to me. And with the older kids, it gives them an excuse to talk about themselves.

And again, in a focus and playful way that doesn't feel uncomfortable, feels like a game. One of the activities that we do, you start off by pairing up. You have one minute to draw the person across from you. But during that one minute, you may not look down at your page and you may not lift up your pen, which means that the best anybody can ever manage is a sort of Picasso, spaghetti, scribbly mess. But two things happen immediately. They start laughing and they start apologizing. They're like, oh, I'm sorry, I think I gave you three notes.

and they're all in your left ear and I've completely lost your teeth and that's great. Everybody has a great time failing and stuff. But what we do is after a couple of rounds of this when they've built up this, they've built up some joy, they've built up some younger kids, love it because older kids and parents can't do any better than they can. So it levels the playing field. People that are self-conscious about their own drawing love it because they could just mess it up. But then what we do is we work backwards and give them titles.

We want to give these picture titles. So we have people that have drawn each other. We'll give them a little prompts. So if I'm doing with adults, I'll ask them to share the secret of the stuffed animal that they had as a kid. What was it? Where did it come from? Why? When was the last time you saw it?

And you can see people like their face has changed. They soften. They start and they start sharing these parts of themselves that are formative, that have made them who they are. And these people have known each other for decades often. But these stories have never come out. And as the rounds go on, I'll ask them to share more vulnerable stories. So, for example, I'll ask them to share a story about the most embarrassing, one of the most embarrassing moments that they had. Okay, so then they share that thing, they laugh with each other.

But then the title of it that I'll ask them to put onto the picture is, I want you to title this based on the words that your partner really needed to hear in that moment. Maybe it was, it's not your fault, or you are loved, or maybe it was move on, this doesn't matter, whatever it might be. And so everybody gets to feel seen and heard. They get to share these connections. And when we do it with kids, the stories that they come out with, the things that they remember that you can't believe you don't remember as a parent is really fascinating. One of the prompts will give is, you know, talk about a challenge that you overcame. To ask a six-year-old, that question feels a little, what's the worst that can happen? But some of the stories that have come out are very touching and surprising. And it might be about snack time. but you can hear the depth of the emotional challenge that they faced when somebody took their crackers and how they handled it or whatever it might be. And that's what's really valuable. I think that emotional connection. Another one of your exercises that I feel like you could use with a family is emblemados. Can you talk about that one? Yes. And as a matter of fact, my wife and co-founder of Make Believe Works, we do emblematos for each other every year.

So emblematos, what we do is we ask people to think about the year ahead and to come up with a motto for themselves that, reflects how they would like to grow over the coming year. But personally, not professionally. So what's an example? Find balance. Prioritize what matters. Strong opinions lightly held. Take the leap. These are all mottos that have come in the past. The key thing is they shouldn't be New Year's resolutions. This is not about going to the gym or eating less ice cream. This is how do you want to show up in the world a little bit better? And then what we do is, I mean, if it's you and your partner, you swap.

them, but in general, if it's a larger group, we anonymously swap them. So people don't know who they're creating something for. And then what we do is we ask them to make a gift for the author of the motto that they've received. We ask to bring that motto to life as a physical emblem, a physical manifestation of it that reflects the hopes, the dreams, the obstacles, the whatever it might be so it can sit on their desk and be, you know, a bit more of a vibrant reminder of what's important to somebody and hold that space. for them. So when we do the shareback, when we do the gift exchange, we'll do it in two beats. So first we hear from the creator of the thing so that we get to hear sort of what their creative process is, their mindset, how they put this together. And then we hear from the writer of their motto.

And that's when we hear sort of what's in their heart and what's driving them. And they might say, you know, I want to take the leap. My motto was take the leap. And you say, well, well, why is that? Well, you know, well, I just realized that, you know, over the years, safety has really become stagnation. I've been in the same job. I have, hated it since day one, and I still hate it, and I need to find a way to push myself into something new. And that becomes a conversation topic. Well, what's going to be different this year than last year? Or one of the classic ones is just, why this motto now? You've been miserable in this job for 10 years. What's changed? And they say, well, I just turned 50, or my father just died, or whatever has happened, that story starts coming out. My wife and I, when we do it, it's an opportunity for us to dig a little deeper.

into our own interior lives of this person that we have chosen to spend our life with. You know, we, especially as parents, but we're parents and we're business owners and we're human beings. So our days go by pretty quick. And we don't always have time for the deep and meaningful conversations. But this is a nice way of getting to it. And rather than just having the conversation of sitting down and saying, well, tell me about this, by making something, it engages a different part of your brain. It engages a metaphoric part. It engages an interpretive part.

The way somebody else interprets what you have said can, it gives you a sort of distance to see your own vision played back through someone else's lens. What are you making the emblems out of? Like, what materials do you use when you have people do this? If we do it digitally, if we're having a remote session, we'll do it with collage materials, because collage is sort of the great safety net of visual design.

You can, it's hard to look bad when you're putting cool things together. When we do it in person, think kindergarten art set. It's pipe cleaners and googly eyes and slinkies and all that sort of thing because we, you know, when we do it with people, we really want to put them into that sort of macaroni necklace mindset. I'm just making something for the joy of making it and not worrying about impressing people, not worrying about being an adult. Just letting yourself be an imaginative being. and let this stuff inspire you. So we'll do it in a room full of friends that have known each other forever.

We'll do it in a room full of salespeople that only know each other's stats. And in both cases, people get in there and they surprise themselves. They put things with mirrors on it and they have magnets and balloons and all sorts of colorful, fuzzy things. And it changes the way they think

about these topics and themselves. And the answers that come out are much less polished. I think part of the problem, problem is that the language that we use to talk about our problems also wraps them in a sort of bubble wrap. But if you see something and it makes you feel something, if you make something and it reflects something that you hadn't even thought about, that's a way to surprise yourself. It's a way to surprise the other person, to catch them off guard and to think in ways that you

you're not used to thinking. Will you talk about the role that laughter and humor play in make-believe and in building these environments that you have put so much time and thought and energy into building? Fun is not enough, but without fun, this is just therapy. And that's not a great look. I'm not a therapist. But the play, the joy, the laughter, I mean, it works on so many different, it works for so many different points. But the first and most important is that it takes the edge off from people. It makes them, it signals to them in a deceptive way, slightly. is signals to that this isn't important.

This isn't serious. So they don't have to overthink it, which allows them to just go with first answers. It allows them to open up. It allows them to take some risks and play. That, I think, is one of the key and pivotal pieces of this. It allows for people to shift gears from professional or from reliable friend or from head of family or whatever those roles that we've taken on in our life. it allows them to sort of take off that suit and throw it in a corner, to hang up our dignity for a little while and see what else is there.

And the other thing is that the laughing and the play, it opens up different ways of thinking. When you're not trying to get it right, and that is how you discover new ideas and new things, and that's where the joy comes from. So I think far from being just frivolous in a good time, I think it's one of the, the, the, the, best ways to push your thinking and to build your courage. So when I think about what it means to have a good sense of humor, in my own definition of it, I think of it as three pieces, right? That like you notice the odd and delightful things in the world around you, you're willing to laugh at yourself.

And then this third piece is that you're willing to take social risks. And the one that I have the hardest time explaining to people is that third piece, the taking social risks. Why is it so important that there's the social piece to it? And especially I want to ask you because you're an introvert. So I imagine you would prefer if there wasn't the social piece to it. A big piece of me would. Yes.

You know, I think of the creativity of play as a little bit like oven mitts. You know, it's a way to handle dangerous material without getting burned. And talking about this stuff with other people feels dangerous. And it does feel like there are consequences. And that's intimidating. I think it's important to do with other people. It can shift the feeling. from shame or embarrassment to just something like just a learning experience.

Oh, I got through that. I came out the other side. And being able to exercise that emotional charge from that stuff really, I think, allows you as a person to grow from it, to learn from it, to channel it, to make it a strength instead of something you're trying to hide that's holding you down. Ben Swire, thank you so much for being here on the show. your book, Safe Danger, is fantastic. I hope that people will read it and check it out, and it was just such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be able to chat.

I love talking about what I do, and I really admire what you're doing with this podcast. So I'm honored to be a part of it. That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Ben Swire. His company is called Make Believe Works, and they lead workshops for organizations. His book is called Safe Danger, and it is full of of practical activities like the ones we talked about on the show today, but it also has so, so, so many more. I really recommend it. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and this episode is part of a month-long series on How to Laugh More that is inspired by my new nonfiction book, Humor Me, which just came out. You can find Humor Me wherever you buy books or at chrisduffycom.com. It would mean a lot to me

if you read it. Thank you to Apple for featuring our podcast on their Living Well collection for 26. Go check it out on Apple Podcasts. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of creative daredevils. On the TED side, we've got risky but also quite safe. Daniela Baleirozzo, Ban-Ban, Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lani Lai, Tanseka Sunga Nivong, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact-checked by Matthias Salas, who tolerates all danger except for factual inconsistencies. On the PRX side, we've got creative iconoclasts and the champions of every team-building activity, Morgan Flannery, Norgill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez.

Thanks again to you for listening. You're an amazing listener, and I would compliment you more, but Ben told me that I shouldn't. So just know that I'm thinking amazing compliments about you. Please share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it, or take a risk and send it to someone you barely know, who knows what might happen. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, thanks for listening and take care.