TED Radio Hour - Listen Again: Work, Play, Rest - Part 2

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Original broadcast date: February 11, 2022. As kids, play comes naturally. But over time, it gets replaced with work. This hour, TED speakers explore how to reconnect with play—to spark creativity, combat despair, and find our way in the world. Guests include musician Jacob Collier, human rights activist Yana Buhrer Tavanier, and web developer Stuart Duncan.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading.

From TED and NPR. I'm Manoosh Zamorodi. And today, part two of our series, work, play, rest. We're examining the fundamental ways that we spend our time and how they're changing, including what it means to play. And we're going to start with some music. This is from a performance. on the TED stage in 2017.

Listening to this performance, you might not guess that all of these instruments are being played by one single musician who is practically leaping across the stage. He's here for a second on the drums. Then suddenly he's upright at his bass and then over to the keyboard. And he is just totally joyous,

playful. That musician is Jacob Collier. up, everyone. Hey, we were just talking about you. Yeah, what's this I'm hearing? Oh, you know, the usual. Let's start by having you introduce yourself. Tell us your name and what you do. So hello. My name is Jacob. I'm from North London. I am a multi-instrumentalist, so I play a few different instruments, and I'm also a producer, and a songwriter and an arranger and composer and a performer and a few other things besides. But mainly I'm just a human being. Something Jacob is so modestly not sharing is that he's also a five-time Grammy Award winner. And he's only 27.

Jacob, exactly how many instruments do you play? Like, what do you have at your fingertips right now, right the second, that you could throw into a song if you wanted to? Oh, well, I've got my voice, which is the main one. And voices do so many different kinds of things. And I'm a huge fan. Then I've got this. which is just a MIDI keyboard and I can play notes on it like that

which is cool. I don't know if you can hear this but this is a bass guitar so that's a bit of a friendly beastie and let me just pick up this as well this is an acoustic guitar in fact it's a five string acoustic guitar

which is a little uncommon and so it's what I just described perhaps plus drums so you've got things that make rhythm you've got things that make harmony, you've got things that make melody, and then you've got things that make sound. And within those four families of kind of musical creation objects, I found myself never bored, never unfastinated by the potential of what music could do. And we should say that you are speaking to us from your home in London from a very special

room where you compose your music. Can you tell us about it? The magical room. Well, I'm... I'm extremely lucky in many senses, I feel, and one of those is that I've always lived in the same house for my whole life. This room was where it all began for me, and it's mainly because this is the room where the piano lives. And pianos are fascinating things for children. Specifically for me, I found it utterly magnetic, the idea that you could sit and basically play all music that had ever been made with these black and white keys, and it was just a matter of uncovering it. And so I spent a lot of time here just kind of seeking my own goosebumps, I suppose, really

kind of drilling into the things that that freaked me out the most and made me the most delighted. And I just got more and more fascinated and more and more thrilled by the kinds of emotional results that you could achieve just through sound and through storytelling all from the comfort of my own home. I also started on piano and I was told I needed to practice for 45 minutes every day. And I'm not, I'm sad to say that I don't play anymore and I hated it. But it sounds like you got different directions or purpose. prompt? Well, I did. I do remember being offered piano lessons, which I politely declined.

Very polite, but I did say it. You know what? I want to keep exploring this on my own terms, which was actually really well received. I was essentially brought up by my mum on her own, and so she had this kind of extraordinary attitude about learning, which really came from play rather than practice. And I think it's an interesting thing to think about and talk about, because it's hard to draw the line between those two. And certain things you need to practice in order to be able to do them. And other things I think are better discovered through just the process of kind of stiffing out what feels really good. And both sides have existed for me ever since I began the world of music, however conscious I've been of either process.

But much to my kind of delight and gratitude looking back, I was really enabled to make my own world and design my own learning process in this room kind of for myself. I mean, what you describe sounds like the essence of what's wonderful about being a child is discovery and experimentation while you play and wonder. But how have you managed to hold onto that as you've become a professional musician as you've gotten older? I mean, and that is the word that so many people use to describe your music is playful, joyous. That's really lovely. It's funny. I still don't really think of myself as a professional musician, even though that sounds kind of strange to say out loud. I don't think I'm that professional. I mean, I sort of, there are certain things that I've gotten very good at, but I think that in some ways there's something very sterile inherently about the word professional, because it means that you stop learning. And I feel like in general, the more I figure out, the more there is to be figured out, I don't feel by any stretch, you know, well, I've finished that now. I don't need to do any more of that. Because I think that, Once you've understood a certain angle or a certain corner or a certain kind of concept or structure within it,

then it just reveals the one beneath it or the one above it, you could say. So it's something someone once said, I can't remember who it was, but they said something like, you know, the creative adult is the child who survived, which I think is kind of true. You know, I mean, every child I'd like to think, so it goes into the world of education and learning with a totally open mind. and it's very, very difficult to kind of come out the other side with that curiosity intact because it's exceptionally easy for people to shut it down. As kids, play comes naturally. It's what children do.

But as we grow older, play gets replaced with work and obligations. We often forget about doing something just because it's plain old fun and because it can spark the unexpected. So today on the show, the surprising power of play, how it can fuel creativity, be an antidote to despair, and even help us find our way in the world. For Jacob Collier, all he wanted to do as a kid was play around with music. And as he grew up, his obsession grew to.

You know, I'd learn a song or listen to something or whatever. And I'd bring it back home and then I would recreate my own kind of spin on it. Maybe I'd record the song and then I'd reverse it. And that's always a fascinating thing, especially for me when I was like 12 or 13. I used to play a game with my friend where we would say a word. You'd say something like, good afternoon. And then you'd reverse it, and it would be like, and then you'd learn how to say the reversed version. You'd say, and then you'd reverse that and see how close you were.

I love it. Which was a really lovely kind of niche game, I suppose. But it was so interesting. And all these tools were brand new. And I didn't understand what on earth I was doing. but I wanted to find out. So eventually, all this playing around, it turned into sharing your music with the world online, performing for crowds.

At what point did that happen? Well, I would say performance and sharing happened at different times for me personally. There was about a three or four year window where I didn't play any songs live. I just released them as I'd created them. And those songs back then, those arrangements and songs were kind of mosaics of sorts. You know, there were lots and lots of different ingredients. All combining together to make a kind of quite an intricate structure. So it was, you know, lots of different voices and lots of different stringed instruments and bass instruments and drums

and various things that you wouldn't call an instrument, but they are definitely instruments like badminton rackets and saucepins and things like that. And they'd all fit together to make this tapestry of sound. It's quite hard to play it live. Sauce pans, did you just say? Oh, I said saucepins. Do you have saucepins? We do. We call them sauce pans. And so, wait, you're playing those? Those are in your room? Are they there right now? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's one up on the shelf here.

Oh, are you okay, Jacob? Sorry, I had to stand on the piano to get it. That's what it sounds like. Ah. It's a good one, isn't it? Kind of like an ogogo. Yeah. So anyway, you know, these things all kind of had their place. But when it came to, you know, how am I going to play this stuff live?

it was a really interesting challenge because I'd never really considered having a traditional kind of band and I kind of felt like the world I was making kind of needed its own degree of performance structure and we started to mess around with a few different things and the first thing I really wanted to build

was this instrument called the vocal harmonizer and the vocal harmonizer that we built is an instrument that basically enables me to sing a note and play a number of notes on a keyboard and what comes out of the instrument is the sound of my voice, but singing all of the notes that I play. So it's kind of like I'm a spontaneous choir. How's everybody feeling today? You feeling good?

Fantastic. Would everybody mind singing with me for just one second? Could you sing something? Could you sing a D? Sing oh. Everyone sing. Oh, louder, sing a louder, sing. Sing a louder, sing. Sing oh. Now please, if you could sing, Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you. Well, the one thing we can't bring people listening right now is that you're very generous with your expressions when you're on stage. Just the real genuine pleasure you derive from hearing sound.

And you can't fake that. No. I think you're so right. And I think there's something really effortless about enthusiasm in a sense. because as you say, it's either there or it's not. And it takes no effort to be enthusiastic about something if you love it. At least that's what I find. When I look back at the music that I have made and the music that I learned as a boy,

a lot of it came literally just came down to what do you like? What is it that you like? I think it's a question that's not asked enough in education where someone says, you know, what do you like? What feels the most important thing to you to make in the whole wide world? Because that's what you'll spend the rest of your life trying to figure out. In a moment, more from Jacob Collier on keeping joy alive, even when play turns into work. I'm Minoosh Zamoroti, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.

We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manushe Zamoroti. On the show today, part two of our series, work, play, rest. We were just visiting with musician Jacob Collier, whose curiosity and sheer enthusiasm led him to a career on stage performing around the world. In other words, his play turned into his work. There is a school of thought where people say, you know, play around, figure out what you love, and do that, and you'll never work a day in your life. It sounds like that school of thought certainly works for you, applies to you.

But there are some people, I think, right now, who are thinking, I have played around. And I haven't found my thing, my calling. You know, I think we look at people like you who are so beautifully managing to take play and turn it into work and back and forth like that. There's a melding there. But I wonder for some people we have to say, like, it's okay. Work is work and play is play. Yeah. Oh, it's such a tough one.

I mean, it is okay to draw a line between work and play. I think to say that they have to be one and the same and that that's the only way that life is true. kind of meaningful. I think that puts pressure on in a certain kind of a way. There are certainly things I do that are no fun at all and that you just have to do. Maybe it's doing a bunch of traveling and being on early flights and all these moments you think, actually, this is, this really isn't fun. It's not healthy. It's not sparking any joy. I'm absolutely ravagingly knackered and I just want to go home. And I do know that, that feeling to a point. And I suppose what I'd say is it actually takes very little time and energy to be curious about something. And for me,

I feel like curiosity is where so much of the joy starts. I know those days where my mind is closed and I don't feel curious. You have those days? Those are the hardest days? Oh, absolutely. And I think that, you know, it was a big lesson for me was how to kind of refine or discover the curiosity. And the thing that I felt, which was wrong, I think, was I have to kind of rekindle

curiosity that I used to feel about certain things. Or even just music. I used to love writing songs and now it feels like, oh, it's just so much pressure or there's a burden here, and I don't know if I, whatever. And I think what I realize is, curiosity is always new. It always starts in the present, and it always applies to the present.

Realizing that helped me get out of a bunch of ruts. I think the other thing about curiosity is that, you know, sometimes when you're curious, you go and create something. You know, you think, I'm interested about that. I'm going to write that down. I'm going to play that on my instrument, or I'm going to teach about that tomorrow in a classroom, or whatever.

And whilst those ideas might stay, the curiosity moves on and it moves on with your life. You know, you might have signed up for a job that felt like the dream job and the job that would give you all of the joy in the world and a few years might go on and you might think, you know what, I just, I think I've moved and I think I need to do something new. And I think that that's part of being human.

All right. So Jacob, we have asked you to play us out of this conversation with a song that was born out of one of your moments of playfulness about being curious about something new. what have you chosen to play for us? I figured maybe I played the song that I released the most recently which is one of my most favorites that I've ever written. In fact, it was written in 15 minutes,

which is a complete whirlwind and I normally spend like months and months crafting a song and this was one of the first songs I ever wrote that just kind of went and it popped out. And it's very simple. It's an F-sharp major, which is one of the best keys in my opinion ever. It was actually in New York City when I wrote this song.

It was just this figure which is so simple. And I just thought, that's nice. And then it was done. I thought, is that it? Do I need to now go, like, make a thousand layers and stuff? And I thought, I don't know, but I recorded it on my phone. And then I forgot about it for a few months.

And I came home. And I sat here in this chair and I thought, okay, how am I going to record this? I thought, well, I've got my microphones out and sat here and sang the song. And it just didn't come close to the voice memo. Just didn't come close to it. So I released the voicemower in the end. Did you? Yeah, I just released the phone voice memo.

And I'm glad I did Because it just reminds me when I listen to it And when I play it It reminds me of how sometimes It starts with just being curious About the smallest of things You know You just grab it for what it is

And it doesn't have to be anything more Than what it is And sometimes it's really plain and simple And it was unlike any other song I've ever kind of written And I love it dearly And it's called The Sun is in Your Eyes

The Sun is in your eyes The Sun is in your eyes The sun is in your eye Throw me the cold Throw me the cold Cold water If you smile again To take me by surprise

You take me by surprise Throw me the bold Threw me the bold Treasure of your lips again You leave me in the right direction With your love as my protection I'll be a world of your projection Jackson.

Singing songs to your affection. With rhymes to your perfection. In my eyes see a reflection. I see you clear. I hold you dear. The sun is in my eyes. That was beautiful. That was just lovely.

Thank you. Thank you very much. That's Jacob Collier. You can see his full TED performance at ted.com. On the show today, the power of play, especially during the toughest times. I had a bit of a difficult childhood, partially due to the fact that I grew up in communist Bulgaria. This is Yana Tavanier. And as a child in Bulgaria, some of her family members were targeted by the communist government.

But Yana remembers the more joyful parts of her childhood too. I actually had a lot of play and happiness and fun in my childhood. Something that was very typical back then when I was a child was that you would wake up and the doorbell would ring and it would be your friends and they would just ask you to come out and play and then anything could happen. Yes, totally. I love this. But as Yanna got older, she lost touch with that playful side of herself. Her work as an investigative journalist and then a human rights activist was absolutely draining. I spent years investigating institutions for people with intellectual and mental health disabilities across Eastern Europe.

I would go to these places undercover and specifically we were focusing on the number of children who died in these institutions. And I was wondering like, this is horrendous. How do I tell the public this tough and horrible fact and how do I make them understand the gravity of the situation? I was trying really, really hard, but at a certain point, nothing seemed to make sense or to matter. And when I was experiencing burnout and these were months and months of this feeling, it was waking up, going to work because you have to, doing some work because you have to. but not really having a sense of real meaning, of real impact, of real value, I felt that I don't matter at all.

Yana Tavannier continues from the TED stage. Numerous studies, including a recent one published by Columbia University, show that burnout and depression are widespread amongst activists. Years ago, I myself was burnt out. in a world of endless ways forward, I felt at my final stop. So what melts fear or downness or gloom? Play. From this very stage, psychiatrists and play researcher Dr. Stuart Brown

said that nothing lights up the brain like play. And that the opposite of play is not work. It's depression. So to pull out of my own burnout, I decided to turn my activism into what I call today plativism. And I know

it is weird to talk about play and human rights in the same sentence. But here's why it's important. When we play, others want to join. Today, my playground is filled with artists, techies and scientists. Together we seek new ways

to empower activism. Our outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is. To us, play is an act of resistance. So, Jana, you learn about the research into play, and you decide to put it into your activism. You call it platoism.

How did marrying those two things change you? I felt, yeah, I felt joyous. The moment you find a way to bring back the joy, this is when you can successfully start to beat burnout. I strongly believe now even more than before that activism shouldn't be a lonely business. And in this process, I came up with a concept plativism, which refers to creating these spaces for play and experimentation in activism. Okay, so tell me how this works and how your organization, fine acts, does this out in the field.

So the way that this works is that we pair one artist and one technologist, and then they have two days to come up with a concept. And then they present these concepts in front of a jury and audience, and it is decided which one finance will produce. There is some sort of direction, but at the same time, almost no rules. And just to give us an example, one of the projects that you've produced is about beating misinformation or fake news. And I have to say, it is really funny. It was a fake bakery, right? Yeah, it was a pop-a bakery that teaches about fake news through beautiful but horribly tasting cupcakes. Yana and her team called their bakery, fakery.

And they launched it with an enticing press release full of lies that got a lot of attention. We created a fake news story that we sent to. media or across Bulgaria, and the story stated that Jamie Oliver, the famous cook, comes to Bulgaria, and we were inviting people to come and try these recipes out. I would say tens and tens of media outlets published this story without, you know, ever putting a second thought or trying to reach us out for confirmation. So they opened their pop-up bakery. It was in an actual restaurant.

all decorated in pink. And one at a time, guests were invited into a special room for a taste test. They sat down, and then... A lit would be lifted, and then the cupcake would be unveiled, and the reactions would be, oh, my God, this is fantastic. Oh, I can't wait to taste this. This is incredible. They look delicious. But these beautiful cupcakes had some unusual ingredients,

like crumbled stinky cheese, fish sauce, salami, and a lot of tobasco. and things of these sorts. And then the moment they would bite into the cupcake would be the moment of truth. There were some actual tears because of the unexpected horrible tastes. Every single person laughed afterwards when they realized how they have been tricked

by the fake news they consumed. Do you feel like I'm chuckling and laughing because it's funny. It's a little bit of a prank in some ways. But do you feel like there's something about this kind of activism that makes people think differently about very hard and serious problems in society? I have spent the last several years trying to understand better what makes people care. Human rights campaigns are very often trying to convey information in either a very serious way or a way that is designed to trigger guilt or sadness or fear. And this is why I believe in the power A of art and B of the feelings of hope and humor also is really important to get people to care about something. A recent study published by Stanford University about the science of what makes people care reconfirms what we have been hearing for years.

Opinions are changed not through more information, but through empathy-inducing experiences. When we play, we learn. So learning from science and art, we saw that we can talk about global art conflict, through light bulbs, or tackle the lack of even one single monument of a woman in SoFi. by flooding the city with them. And with all these works, to trigger dialogue, understanding, and direct action. Can we talk about one of your more recent projects? Dictators is a board game that puts players in the shoes of a dictator,

so they get to really grasp the tools and tactics of oppression. And I'm saying it in that voice because it sounds so ludicrous. So people have different opinions when it comes to mixing politics and humor. Where do you feel like you draw the line? Is it pushing it just far enough? In terms of hitting the right balance between seriousness and humor, I would always vote more for the humorous side. But overall, we need to believe that the idea will have a real impact.

there are games that are kind of waving a moralizing finger and are trying to talk about oppression but in a way that is very serious. People don't want to engage with the topic because it's too overwhelming. And we think that by designing a game that puts you in the shoes of a dictator, obviously you would be more willing to open up your mind. and to actually learn the different ways in which dictatorship works, because there are steps towards a dictatorship. And we want through this game to make people recognize specific tactics

that are perhaps being implemented by their own government. Thus, we think that through the playful component we would have people, yeah, play and learn. Sometimes when I talk about taking risks and trying and failing in the context of human rights, I meet raised eyebrows. Eyebrows that say, how irresponsible or how insensitive, people often mistake play for negligence. It is not. Play doesn't just grow our army stronger or spark better ideas. In times of painful injustice, play brings the levity we need to be able to breathe.

When we play, we live. I cannot overstate the value of experimentation in activism. We can only win if we're not afraid to lose. That was Jana Tavañir, the co-founder and executive director of Fine Acts. You can see her full talk at TED.com. Today on the show, part two of our series. I'm Manoosh Zamoroti, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoosh Zamoroti. And today on the show, The Power of Play. So I've always been a gamer my whole life. But, of course, for me, gaming was, you know, taking rolls of quarters to the arcade. This is Stuart Duncan. And they had all the classics like Street Fighter and World War II. of combat.

But even older than that, we had like the old tabletop games. Pac-Man, Centipede, those old, old classics on a table. Like I literally, I had one of those actual huge boxes with a knob at each end of the thing and a switch in the middle and that was Pong. And I always thought of it as a tool to increase my problem solving, my hand-eye coordination, my reflexes, all that sort of stuff. I got better at things because of trying to figure out these video games. Fast forward and video games have changed. But so has Stewart. He's a web developer and a single dad. Yeah, I have two teenage sons, 16 and 14. The oldest is Cameron. He is autistic. And his younger brother, Tyler, is not autistic.

And when Cameron was diagnosed, Stewart realized that maybe playing video games could be a way to help his son. We were getting him into speech therapy, occupational therapy. He, and to this day still, struggles with motor control. So in the beginning was gross motor control, you know, just doing the really big movements. And then, of course, eventually the fine motor control, writing with a pencil and stuff like that. And I had the idea. If you remember the Wii, the first one, the controller, you could put it into a steering wheel and play Mario Kart. and you would drive it like a car, like an actual steering wheel.

And I put the wheel in his hand, and all he had to do was turn his hands a little bit and press one button to make it go. He didn't have to coordinate, do any button combinations, none of that stuff. And, of course, at first he would twist his arms all the way around, so, you know, Mario was just spinning on the track and stuff. But over time, he started to get the smaller movements, the gradual turns, this and that. and knowing when to back up and stuff like that. And he picked that stuff up. And then he started beating me in races. So he developed really good gross motor skill controls by playing Mario Kart on the Wii.

They've been gamers ever since. So you started with Mario Kart. But at some point, you guys discovered Minecraft, right? Which is pretty much one of the most popular online games ever. But for people who haven't played it, Just describe it, Stuart. What is Minecraft? How does it work?

So basically you start Minecraft, it literally plops you into the middle of a randomly generated world. So your world will not be the same as anybody else's. And there'll be trees, there'll be oceans, there'll be deserts, there'll be little animals running around like chickens and cows and stuff. And then at night, monsters come out. And you're basically just left to fend for yourself in this gigantic, open, infinite world where you can do just about anything your imagination can think of.

And that's because everything is kind of made out of these virtual blocks, right? You can build the house of your dreams with a pool. You can build a mansion. It is like Lego on steroids. And that's kind of the beauty of it. I describe it as there's no wrong way to play. Like nobody can tell you you're doing it wrong. Like, yeah, some people do exactly that.

They'll make themselves a nice little house with a pool and a garden. Other people build castles and entire medieval villages around them. Some people recreate the landscapes in Lord of the Rings. One person built a Nintendo emulator inside of Minecraft. So they were actually playing Mario Brothers inside of Minecraft because the game is just that robust. There's just so much to it that literally, when I say there's no limit, there really is no limit.

But Stewart started noticing a downside to Minecraft. I saw parents on social media reaching out to other parents asking if their autistic children could play together. And the reason is that when they tried to play on public servers, they kept running into bullies and trolls. Here's Stuart Duncan on the TED stage. When you have autism, you behave a little differently sometimes, sometimes a lot differently. And we all know that a little bit of difference is all you really need for a bully to make you their next target. So these terrible, terrible people online, they would destroy everything that they tried to make. They would steal all their stuff, and they would kill them over and over again, making the game virtually unplayable.

But the worst part, the part that really hurt the most was what these bullies would say to these kids. They'd call them rejects and defects and retards. And they would tell these kids, some as young as six years old, that society doesn't want them and their own parents never wanted a broken child, so they should just kill themselves. And, of course, these kids, you'd understand, they would say, sign off from these servers angry and hurt, they would break their keyboards. They quite literally hate themselves and their parents felt powerless to do anything. So I decided I had to try and help. I have autism. My oldest son has autism. And both my kids and I love Minecraft,

so I have to do something. So I got myself a Minecraft server. Hmm. Stuart, this is so upsetting to hear what these kids experienced online. They just wanted a fun place to play. But you saw that and you thought, you know, maybe I can fix this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It was starting to break my heart more and more and more. I saw it because you keep seeing people saying, I wish there was. I wish there was a server where my kids could play. I wish that they could play without being. I wish that. And I saw I need for these kids to be able to play together where that sort of behavior wouldn't be allowed. Now, keeping in mind, I had a full-time job at the time. I have two kids. I have two kids.

kids. I was busy enough already, but to me, I thought maybe we'd get a few hundred people to join the server, and it would be something I could do in my spare time and just give them this place where trolls wouldn't be able to get in. But little did I know what I was getting myself into. There was a whole lot more need for it than I ever realized. I spent about two weeks building a really makeshift village. I put a big welcome sign in the sky so that people felt welcomed. I built a lodge on a mountain top so people could gather. Just basic little things that were just the worst. Compared to any other Minecraft server, it was just so bad.

But it would be theirs and it would be safe. So I built it up. Two weeks later, I go on Facebook and I posted to my friends, which is a list of like 300 people on Facebook, just to see. And I said, I started a Minecraft server. It's just for children with autism and their families. Other people are welcome to join, like, you know, brothers, sisters, friends. And that's it.

That was like literally two sentences shared with my friends. And I got about 750 emails in the first two days. Oh, my God. The word just spread like wildfire. The autism community just came together and went, you need to know about this. Stuart named his Minecraft world, Otcraft. And there were guidelines, rules. No breaking things or stealing.

no fighting or killing, no cursing or being mean. And parents and friends would be there to enforce these rules and just make sure kids were having fun. And it was pretty amazing because it just, it formed this really close, supportive, encouraging family like almost instantly. Everybody was there for each other. Everybody, when somebody had a bad day,

everybody would be like, oh, it's okay, you can talk to us if you need to, you know, tell us all about it or whatever. And a lot of them just never used the chat, never opened up, never talked. They were afraid of awkward situations of being teased about this or that. But pretty much from day one that Hotcraft opened, these kids would come in, be quiet. And the talkative ones would say, this is how you can do this, as you can get this protected and stuff and everything, and they would open up.

I started hearing from parents who said that their nonverbal children were starting to speak. They only talked about Minecraft, but they were talking. Some kids were making friends at school for the first time ever. Some were starting to share and even give things to other people. It was amazing. And every single parent came to me and said it was because of Ockcraft, is because what are you doing? But why, though?

How could all of this be just from a video game server? Well, that goes back to the guidelines that I use when I created the server. Guidelines that I think help encourage people to be their very best, I hope. For example, communication. It can be tough for kids with autism. It can be tough for grownups without autism. But I think that kids should not be punished. They should be talked to.

Nine times out of 10, when the kids on the server act out, it's because of something else that's happened in the day. At school or at home, maybe a pet died. Sometimes it's just a simple miscommunication between two children. They don't tell the other person what they're about to do. And so we just offer to help. We always tell the children on the server that we're not mad and they're not in trouble. We only want to help.

And it shows that not only do we care, but we respect them enough to listen to their point of view. view. On most servers, players are rewarded for how well they do in a competition, right? The better you do, the better reward you get. That sort of thing can be automated. The server does the work. The code is there. On Outcraft, we don't do that. We have things like Player of the Week and CBAs, which is caught being awesome. Our top award, the Autism Father Sword, which is named after me because I'm the founder, is a very powerful sword that you can't get in the game any other way than to show that you completely put the community above yourself.

and that compassion and kindness is at the core of who you are. And we've given away quite a few of those swords, actually. I figure if we're going to watch the server to make sure nothing bad happens, we should also watch for the good things that happen and reward people for them. So, Stuart, the world you have described in our craft, it sounds fair, almost utopian for kids with autism and their families. But I guess I need to ask, you know, does this really prepare these kids for reality? I mean, the world is not a nice place.

where people follow the rules or get called out for bad behavior and then coached to communicate better. Some might think that you're coddling kids in this place and that it will not serve them when they need to fend for themselves in the real world. Yeah. Yeah, I hear that a lot. And I also hear, you know, these kids should be learning these social skills face to face and not online. Yeah, so what do you say to that? I would say I would prefer a child to make mistakes without fear of being harshly punished for it. I want them to learn from their mistakes and be encouraged to make mistakes to learn right from wrong rather than just walk away going, I don't know what I did wrong. Some of them are in their late teens, early 20s, and it's really hard for them to filter themselves

so that what they say and do is adequate for like a six or seven year old. But they do it. And, you know, like it's a lot of, it's a lot of being, constricted by rules just like society, but also having the freedom to be able to make all the mistakes they want and try all the things they want without fear of, you know, just being shut down and hurt and bullied for it. I'll give you this example from last Christmas one year ago. This kid joined the server in 2013, way back when. And I believe he was like 12 at the time.

So you think like eight years ago or seven years ago at the time, he was 12 years old. He had joined the server and he was quiet and shy and super scared because he was about to go into high school. And so we supported him and we were there for him and we talked about it and it was hard and studying and homework and all this stuff for four years. And then after that came university. And then he was really scared about university and he went through that and he did all that sort of stuff. And then he kind of dropped off the server because he was busy, obviously. And he came back last Christmas near the end of the year. And I was like, hey, I haven't seen you in a while.

It was good to see you and everything. He says, listen, he messaged me privately. He says, I just wanted to come back. I'm so happy to see the server still here and doing well. So I wanted to tell you that like when I joined, I was 12. He said, I never would have made it through high school. I never would have been able to join the social clubs and do well. He said, I probably never would have went to university and been outspoken and done the stuff I wanted to do if I had

never been on Ockcraft. And now I'm back specifically to tell you that I just got my dream job at Lego headquarters. Wow. And he's telling me, you know, he says, I owe so much to Ockcraft because I learned how to make friends and to join groups and to be like a team leader on projects and this and that and, you know, get involved with other people and do stuff. And he's like, I just, I'm so happy to see Ockraft is still here in doing well. And I was like, that's just made my whole year. Like, seriously, though, how do you do all this, Stuart? Because on the one hand, you're the admin, so you're actually, you know, technically you're in charge of all of this.

But then it also sounds like you are acting as therapist and referee and CEO. And, I mean, this is your full-time job now, right? Oh, I wish I only did the hours of a full-time job. But did you give up your other, your other? Your quote-unquote real job to do this? Yeah, my job was struggling. I wasn't able to meet deadlines. I was having to like, I was like in the middle of meeting saying, oh, could we continue this a little bit later?

There's a player that needs me right now. Yeah. I wasn't able to keep up with the two because literally Otcraft, I wake up usually 7 a.m. And I check on everything. And I'm continuing right up until midnight. Who is paying you? Supporters. I took a huge month.

I still, to this day, don't make as much as I did as a web developer. But it was enough that I was able to cover my bills. You know, you hear from these parents who say that their children are happy. One person tweeted that their son said that they had the most amazing day, and she never thought she would ever hear that from them again. Like, it's been forever. So that's that reward. So Stuart, I have to ask, do you have a message for parents, parents of kids who are obsessed with playing Minecraft, whether they are autistic or not?

And maybe these parents just don't get it. Like, what do you say to them? I don't know how much you know about the autism community, but there's one specific expression that comes up a lot. And it's your child is not ignoring you. They're waiting for you to enter their world. And I can think of no more literal interpretation of that than Minecraft. Like pick up a controller or mouse and keyboard and join them in their world and you will find like the most meaningful bond with your child that you've ever had because then you start

planning builds. You start planning adventures. You're having a great time. And I love nothing more on my server than when I see entire families, four or five people, mom, dad, kids. We recently had a mom just joined. she's on her application. Hope she doesn't mind. I'm not selling her name, but she's 60.

And she's joining in to play with her son. And she's having a great time. And if I could get parents to know one thing, it's simply just join them. If five and six-year-olds can figure this out, if they can sit in front of a screen and figure out the controls, then you can too. You just have to put in the effort and it's worth it. That's Stuart Duncan. He runs Ockcraft. a Minecraft server for kids with autism and their families.

You can see his full talk at ted.com. Just thinking back on this episode, we heard how play inspires Jacob Collier's unique style and how Yana uses it to change people's minds. My takeaway is, and maybe yours is too, that the spirit of joy, curiosity, and just plain fun can lead to so many unexpected outcomes. Next week, the final episode in our series, work, play, rest.

Get ready for some unusual ideas about how we relax and reset. To see hundreds more TED Talks, check out TED.com or the TED app. This episode was produced by Rachel Faulkner, Fiona Gehran, and James Delahousie. It was edited by Sana's Mesquenpour. Our TED Radio production staff also includes Jeff Rogers, Diba Motisham, Katie Montalione, Matthew Cloutier. Our audio engineer is Brian Jarbo, and our intern is Margaret Serino. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewee. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelein, Michelle Quint, Sammy Case, and Daniela Belizezo. I'm Anoush Zameroi, and you've been

listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.