Attack of the Creative Brain

Creativity is one of humanity's most crucial skills, and it is also one of the least-understood. In this episode, Robert and Julian explore the science, myths and theories surrounding creativity.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Tell me, Julie,
where do how do you stir up your creativity? You've
got a lot of creativity and that that millionators. How
do you how do you get it going? Wow? Um?

(00:26):
Do you know what? I usually look at certain books
that I think you are intriguing or um, sometimes I
just sit down and write and just try to empty
out all the goo. Yeah, yeah, what about yourself? Um?
You know, it depends on the task, I guess, but
I find music tends to help put on some sort
of music that seems fitting to you know, if I'm
if it's a particular writing assignment or project, you know,

(00:48):
like what kind of music would stir me and get
me into this? Yeah? Um, A little coffee doesn't help,
I mean doesn't hurt. I mean a lot of coffee doesn't.
Coffee doesn't help. A small amount of coffee certainly helps.
But but yeah, it's sort of set in the mood.
And then of course inspiration from other things. If there's
you know, look at looking at you think looking at

(01:09):
at writing that I really like, looking at at art
that I really like, and just you know, becoming inspired
and sort of mishmashing ideas together. Yeah, I will say that.
Um sometimes I'll dance around too, which is a horrible admission,
but I will. Um, I'll do like kind of eighties
moves around the furniture and like high kicks and um,

(01:30):
like do you think I'm kidding, I'm just imagining doing
like kung fu in your in your living room or
something to get up. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. There's
something about movement that's really freeing. And um, I think
that kind of goes back to that whole thing about
music and and they're inherently being that part of your
brain that wants to move get things going anyway. Yeah,
these are the ways that that, um, you know, we

(01:53):
kind of throw out the marbles of creativity and have fun. Yeah,
And the creativity is one of those things everybody wants
to slide to this pie. If you've got a slice
of this pie, you want a bigger slice. Like nobody
I've never heard anybody say, man, I'm just too creative.
I wish I was just a little less creative. And
maybe you know, everybody's like, oh, man, I wish I
could you know, you know, you know, even if you

(02:13):
you're not have you're not you don't have writer's block
or you're you're not, you know, having trouble coming within
the ideas, everybody could use a little a little bit more.
And and also everybody's been trying to understand it. Um,
you know, besides the fact that you could potentially market
something to improve creativity, uh, you know, it's just one
of the big questions about you know, who we are.
We're a creative species. So what's at the bottom of that? Right? Yeah,

(02:34):
so what's what is the science behind creativity? If you
can even look at it that way, which thanks to
fm r I, once again we have a way that
we can start to measure these things. So it's not
just um, you know, certain disciplines that are able to
you know, expand on the greatness of creativity and how
we can go after it. We can we can look
at the muse if we want, but then we can

(02:54):
also look at fm R I and say, okay, what
what's actually driving us in this process. There are a
number of different views on it that have come out
over the years that don't involve moras that that I
find interesting. Some of these I think we can sort
of well, we'll just sort of judge these as we
go through, all right, I will turn on my judging mind.
Don't turn on the judging mind. We'll discuss it more later.

(03:17):
But first there's the cognitive view, and uh, this is
kind of like the basic idea here is that like
even a computer, if properly programed, could get really creative
and it's just a matter of you know, data A
plus data be I will combine into novel or mash
up track you know that kind of just want to
know that you're doing robot hands right now, just just
so people can get the full effect. Well, we did

(03:39):
him in yoga last night, So I got all into
your robot hands. Wo robot yoga. Yeah, the one where
you lay down on the floor and you make robot hands.
Now maybe you guys don't do that now, sorry. Mine
are less robotic, yeah, more touchy feely. Um okay, So
that's one of them. Then there's the psychoanalytic Freudian view,
and this one, um, I don't know like because this

(04:01):
one says that creativity is an occurrence of the subconscious.
All right, well, that's fine, but it also gets into
the idea of humans attempt to avoid pain through the
creation of daydreams and dreams and fantasies. And if you
follow this theories, like every like cool creative thing that
has ever been is us trying to avoid pain? Um,
which is a is a reaction to like a depressive circumstance. Yeah,

(04:23):
and just just sort of like I gotta get my
mind out of this world in this life. I'm gonna
you know, it's just which which holds up with I
think the thing is some of the a lot of
these examples like they can hold up under certain types
of creativity. And you could say, all right, well there,
you know, this is an example somebody trying to escape
some hard circumstances and maybe they're doing a little bit
of dreaming to get out of this world. But then, like,

(04:43):
how do you explain somebody like Bobby McFerrin. Bobby McFerrin
is happy, Bobby mcparents creative. Bobby mcferhin couldn't exist under
this view. He doesn't need to escape his reality. He
creates his reality exactly. Yeah, he's a happy Um. You know,
so I think I have problems no, I see that
because it's limiting. Yeah. Then there's the behaviorals few and

(05:05):
uh this is uh this one states the creativity is
a combination of previously know knowledge joined together spot in
with with a lot of spontaneity. Um and uh. And
it's also you know, it's about conditioned response to two situations. Now,
this one I kind of like it's it is kind
of like strikes me, kind of the mash up approach,
you know, where it's like I'm looking at this, I'm

(05:25):
looking at this. They come together new combinations or new
ideas and you know, kind of falling into stuff we've
talked about in the in the Dream Inspiration the Dream
Inception podcast, we're talking about the brain kind of does
this where it sort of throws things together, different combinations,
and uh, an insight can sort of emerge from this. Okay,
because when you say behavioralists, I always think about PF.

(05:47):
Skinner And then I started thinking about Pavlov's dog and
could Pavlov's dog have been creative? I guess you. Yeah,
that's the that's the downside to it, because it does
We'll make it a situation where this is conditioned response
to a situation. So Um. So yeah, bs Skinners kind
of a kill joy to everything drag him into. And
I mean, I'm not I'm sure the dog was creative,

(06:09):
probably did get creative time after time after time that
the bell was rung and it started salivating. Um. Then
there's the Another one is the intrinsic motivational view, and
this is the the idea that people reach their creative
potential through the desire for pleasure and the activities that
they engage in. Um. And of course, the major criticism

(06:30):
on this is that not all creativity or you know,
an inventive enterprise comes out of an enjoyment of an activity.
Now I would I would argue that it helps if
you enjoy it. I mean, I'm I'm having a hard
time thinking of an example where somebody did something really
creative and awesome and hated every minute of it. No.
And i know I've said this like probably a million
times in the previous podcast, but you know, it's that

(06:53):
whole obsessive quality to it that the mind plays with
what it loves essentially, right, So that's perhaps why we
perhaps why we dream about certain things, or we just
keep sort of rotating a certain problem around in our mind.
Because we want to find this solution you have to
take a totally non scientific slant on It's kind of
like the whole you can taste the love thing about food,

(07:14):
you know, like this this meal is prepared by somebody
who's really into and you can taste the love and
this meal was made in a factory, and there's you know,
love is not on the list of crazy um, long
winded ingredients hydrogen hydrogenated peanut oil, love, high pre dost
corn syrup. So but but I think there's a you know,
there's a sense of that and a lot of things.
It's like if if someone doesn't care about it, if

(07:36):
they're not passionate about they're not obsessed at least on
some level with it. If the brain is not, like
you say, playing with what it loves, then you can
you can generally tell because it's kind of it's gonna
be crap. Yeah. Yeah, I'm also thinking to you about coffee,
since you've already mentioned it and that great ted talk
that you sent me. Oh yes, yes, about where just

(07:57):
creativity come from? Yeah, coffee, Yeah, because the argument there
was that before coffee really integrated European society, people were
drinking water, because this stuff will make you sick. So
what do you drink all day alcohol exactly all day long,
morning tonight, just a complete stupor for centuries. Yeah. And
this is Steven Johnson, right, he's a writer and a

(08:20):
founder of Feed magazine. And uh, he was talking about that.
He was saying like, look here here, you have a
depressant alcohol for all of this time, you know, up
until like the sixteen hundreds and then boom coffee houses. Yeah,
you not only have the stimulant, but you also have
the culture in the interaction, the interaction, the flow of ideas,

(08:41):
and all of a sudden, the Age of Enlightenment is
starting to percolate in the UK, which is really interesting. Yeah,
elsewhere it's still fer minute right, yes, too far. I
don't know I like that. Um well, let's get into
one more view take on this before we get into
the more scientific stuff, and that is the developmental view

(09:02):
and that this one is another one I really don't like.
This is this one sounds like you know, the the
hard uh you know, this hard faced father that doesn't
want his child to uh, you know, to to write
poetry but wants him to play for the football team.
Kind of a thing because it's uh in general, right, well,
at least she's you know, making them play the piano

(09:23):
or very creative instrument. This presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So this one maintains that
the majority of creative behavior exists in younger life and

(09:46):
uh and and it's these these younger developmental years that
that stirs to become creative. And then as as we
grow out of that, we grow out of such foolish
ideas as creating things that are beautiful. Yeah, we get
down to the hard science of the let's see, that's
the other thing. So something inside his dies, something inside
of dies. We get older, and you know, I think

(10:08):
this is one of those that you can sort of
I don't agree with it, but if you hold it up,
you can say, oh, well look at this this artist.
They sure did run out of good ideas as they
got older. But but then you see so many people
who are just contrary to the rule. Like one of
my one of my favorite authors is this guy, Brian McNaughton.
And it wasn't ntil the end of his life that
he wrote like it's this really awesome collection of short

(10:29):
stories called Thrown of Bones and it was like the
last thing he really wrote, and then he kind of
and then he kind of trickled off and died, but
he broke that like blow into his uh like into
his fifties. I think. So. I was actually looking at
some research on peak ears depending on different disciplines, and
it turns out that writers actually peak after their forties generally,

(10:50):
and that poets like twenties and then it's over. I
know it's very odd, but I wonder if it kind
of goes back to that idea that there's there's something
um intrinsic to the way that you are looking at
the world when everything is fresh and new. Yeah, or
maybe the writers somehow avoid getting a real job into

(11:10):
the mid forties and the poets able to find the
gain game for employee. Yeah, yeah, that's right. They didn't
really widen the circumstances of the studies they were looking
at to include that information. So it's very possible. Um.
But you know, when I think about creativity, I always
think about the right brain. You have to say, I
was one of those people who thought, okay, this is
you know, I'm a right brain person or I'm a

(11:30):
left brain person, and that seems to be something that
is completely inaccurate that came out of some sort of
seventies notion of personality tests. Yeah, but people loved it
because it has this sort of star bellied sneeches kind
of a thing to it, where it's and it's like
it's a it's a war between the creatives and the
non creatives. It's the left brain versus the right bright
and this idea of an internal struggle too. Yeah. But

(11:51):
and in fact it's actually a lot more nuanced than that.
In the the conclusion from one study by surgeon and
jazz musician Charles Limb, who will now refer to as
the Jazz Doctor Jazz doctor, and and that is that
there is no single creative area of the brain. So
there's no focal activation of a single area, which is
really important. Yeah, You've got a whole lot of stuff

(12:13):
going on there. And it's it's not like you can say, look,
there's the creativity right there. It's you look at these
f m r I s that people of engaging in
creative activities, and it's you know, it's throughout the brain.
It's not like, you know, just one little portion lighting up. Yeah.
And when they were looking at some of these activities
to a lot of them were music based ones. And
we saw this when we were doing research for music

(12:35):
and the brain. Same thing, like the entire head is
or the entire brain is lighting up like a pinball machine.
So that's that's the interesting part about this. You know,
you've got language, you've got the seat of judgments, so
on and so forth. Yeah. I was really impressed with
this one and that they had like a special keyboard
uh created that could basically go inside the f m

(12:56):
R I, which again the fm R. I've ever seen
people going into a giant, you know, big big square
device with a little hole in it, and you know
they put them in. They have you have to be
real real still like that's the f m R I.
And and so they had to create this little keyboard
that they could the jazz musicians could could do a
little improv piano playing on while they were in it.

(13:17):
So and they had to create it so they had
like you know, minimal interference with the fMRI I and
it sent like a MIDI signal to a computer and
then and then that was so they could hear it back. Yeah, um,
which is yeah, so incredible thing of course the jazz
doctor would do that, right, And again that's Charles Limb.
He's looking at these m R scans of jazz musicians
and rappers, Yeah, freestyle rappers. This part was really amazing too,

(13:39):
where he's getting like he's looking like with the number
of Baltimore area hip hop artists and like getting them
in put throwing him in the f m R I
and and just getting them the freestyle and yeah, and
this is the cool thing. This is this is how
he created the study is with the jazz musicians, he
had them learn a piece of music that he wrote
that was only familiar to him, and then he asked

(13:59):
them to play it back and they scanned their brains
and then he asked them, Okay, can you improvise on this?
They looked at the improvisation in the brain scanning. At
the same time, same thing with the rappers. They had
the rappers rap something that the jazz doctor wrote. Just
pretty fun. It's actually pretty good for like a non rapper,
Um says me, who has no experience in the rap world.

(14:23):
It's it's adorable, but I don't know that it is. Okay,
you're right, it's a it's adorable rapping. And then there
are certain words that are highlighted in this um, in
this prepared jazz ex excusing on jazz rap that Dr
Jazz says, Okay, now, rapper, can you take those at
certain cues, take those words, and now you start to freestyle,

(14:46):
you start to im improvise on this. And what's really
interesting is they found that there are a couple parts
of the brain that that went really quiet during the improvisation.
And this is the brains dorsal lateral prefrontal and lateral
overtald regions. Okay, just for the just for the record,
I'm touching that part of my head, okay, yeah, and

(15:08):
that's the seat of judgment. So what that was telling
us is that in order to improvise to reach what
I think is sort of like an apex of creativity, right,
because if you're just free forming anything, then you're really
relying on um not just your own past experiences, but
you're really playing with form. And so that part that's
like oh they're no good, Oh stop doing that, which

(15:30):
is called the observer effect actually in writing, Yeah, that
part goes quiet. So we know that in order to
reach that sort of state, you have to be able
to get in some sort of flow. Okay, so this
is yeah, this is the flow moment. And this is
like when you're writing and somewhat you don't even realize
that the music has stopped playing and you're just going yeah, yeah.
And then what they saw is that the medial prefrontal
cortex was going nuts. Um. And they also the and

(15:55):
then allows self expression by the way, so you know,
there's there's an actual hard data here, as much as
it can be with fm R I that points to
at least this one part of it. We know that
we have to be in this sort of frame of mind.
And it actually falls in line with any if anybody
out there has ever taken an improv class. Um, you
know that is I recall from like acting classes back

(16:18):
in college. Um, you know, they're always like, you know,
don't don't think of don't you know, don't bring your
judgment into it. Just go with it. Just you know,
don't don't worry about looking like a fool because because
that's gonna that's gonna get in the way of doing
something which like for nine percent of the population, is
really hard to do. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
the same and anytime you create something and you're going

(16:38):
out on all them and you've got to You've gotta
be on one level, you've gotta be confident in what
you're doing, but also just kind of like, yeah, some
people may not dig it, and we're gonna roll with that.
I do that every time I get behind this microphone.
I guess, yeah, me too. Um, but yeah, I mean
you have to have a passion for it too, right,
So there that that's where that comes into play. You
want to be able to have fun with it and

(17:01):
um and hang out with whatever format you are using,
whether or not it's podcasting or um, whether or not
it's scientific research or astrophysicists, all of that creativity comes
into play. Well, that's something that, Yeah, that also is
important to stress about, Like the whole idea of what
word is creativity come from. There's also this kind of
false dichonomy between like artistic creativity and scientific creativity. Yeah,

(17:24):
it's kind of that's sort of been like gangs, you know,
like East Side West Side in the past because they
never thought that the two would meet. But since we're
learning so much more about how creat creativity works, we
realize that it's across the board. Um. And in fact,
and that actually makes me think about that Stephen Johnson
ted video because he talks about that sort of improv

(17:45):
that happens um. And he used the example of when
spot nick was launched and how there were some astrophysicists
hanging around and someone was like, hey, can you guys
figure out the trajectory of that? Can you do those
front words and backwards? And just as a you know, okay,
well we'll just sit down and do this for eight
hours sort of thing. We're playing with that data, which

(18:07):
led to what we now know is GPS. Right, it's
just so cool. It's not even something they set out
to do. It's just sort of a game for them.
Another thing that I wanted to talk about too, in
terms of myths is that there's this lone creative genius idea.
So again talking about these astrophysicists who got together on
this problem. Um, you know that that flies in the

(18:29):
face of what we always think of as this person,
you know, toiling away at whatever they're doing and having
that Eureka moment, when in fact we know that it
really takes a village, so to speak. UM. And that
usually and of course it can be a solitary endeavor,
but it's not usually something that just happens out of
the blue. It's usually um something that someone's been working
on for a really long time. And it's almost like

(18:51):
um in terms of groups, sort of like emergency we
talked about in that podcast, where everybody is pooling their
intelligence and that's creating all of this um really interesting
innovative ways to look at a problem and to tackle it.
And I was even thinking about someone like the artist
Damian Hurst, who has done like the huge puppy dog sculpture.

(19:13):
I don't think I've seen that. Yeah, it's it's amazing.
I don't even I want to say. It's like a
hundred feet high, and um, he's none different versions of them,
and you know it's it's a highly polished veneer. It
looks like metal and it reflects back the person looking
at it, and for some reason it's really mesmer I
think it's very cool. Anyway, He's done a lot of
this sort of um pop art, as suppose you could

(19:33):
call it. But the fact of the matter is that
this guy has a huge team of artists working under him,
who feed him ideas, who come up with color samples
and so it's not like just Damian Hirst sitting there
being a genius. So it's kind of like the Mr
Brainwash Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, from the documentary exit through
the Yes yeah, so yeah. I mean he's relying on

(19:56):
a lot of different people to get together on these ideas,
and of course he's you know, I guess you could
say that he's the person who's directing the project, but
without all of those people under and there's no way
that he could pull off the sort of art that
he does. It's like the George Lucas factor. You know.
It's like when when you look at the creation of
the original Star Wars movies, it's like, yeah, Lucas had
like decided, but then he's like, all right, guys, design

(20:17):
me this, design me that. And you know so I
kind of think of like Mr Brainwash and George Lucas
and the same the same area. Yeah no, And it's
but you know, it may have been him who looked
at a bridge and then said, oh, the way that
that bridge is constructed, how how can I fit that
into this worldview that I'm creating, which is really interesting,
But you're right, it takes a fleet of people to

(20:40):
pull that off Star No starl at Star Treks. Oh Man,
that was almost a huge nerd photo. Um. Yeah, and
it's it gets in the idea of the of of
collective intelligence. You know that that it's you know, it's
about interaction between individuals and uh. And I actually ran
across this great quote from the Wall Street Journals Matt Ridley, Um,

(21:03):
and he was his whole thing was like, there's hope
for the future because quote ideas are having sex with
each other as never before, you know, And because it's
because of the idea is that like modern innovation doesn't
depend on a single human brain to contain it because
you have you have all these people working working on things,
and then it's it's like everybody is like has the

(21:23):
like I sometimes when I think of creativity, I think
that like the maple syrup spiggott pep in the tree
and it's stuck in the the side of your head.
Like everybody can squeeze out a cup each day, but
through like modern science and modern culture, everybody is taking
that little cup of syrup and they're pouring it into
the collective ocean of syrup that we continue to pull from.

(21:44):
Then it's a search job to wade through the syrup
and figure out what it is that we need syrups. Yeah, yeah,
which I mean presents its sound problem. Right. Yeah. We
get into the whole idea of you know web three
point oh and the semantic web, where the the web
that the syrup ocean will wade through itself. Um, at
our slightest command gets it's pretty sticky. I don't know

(22:06):
what's going on here. There's a lot of fun thing
going on. Um. Well, that makes me think of dopamine,
of course. Yes, this is the the the good stuff,
if you will. Yeah, yeah, the surupy stuff. Um, there's
a sort of dopamine factor, if you will. And researchers
were studying receptors in the brain and they found at
the Karlinska instill it um uh that there's a dopamine

(22:31):
system in healthy, highly creative people that's similar to some
people with schizophrenia. So it's almost like this dopamine gene.
Actually it's not almost, it is um. They've found they
have found actually that the dopamine receptors are linked to
the ability for divergent thought, which is really necessary and

(22:51):
creative thinking or innovative thinking. Um. The study measured the
creativity of the healthy individuals using psychological test and then
the ask was to find as many solutions to a
problem as possible, and so they found that highly creative
people they're calling them healthy people because they don't have schizophrenia,
and schizophrenic people have a low density of dopamine receptors.

(23:13):
And what this means is that the dopamine receptors and
the thalamus, which is linked to the sensory information that
gets passed onto the frugal cortex, um means that there's
a lower degree of signal filtering and so there's a
higher flow of information from the thalamus, which really means
that like what might get sort of plugged up before,
all these ideas are actually coming through at an incredible rate.

(23:36):
It's what I'm thinking is that you're just getting bombarded
by all these different ideas, which I thought it was
pretty fascinating. So that sort of accounts for some of
the more bizarre symptoms that you see in schizophrenia, but
in a healthy person, that accounts for their ability to
make creative associations pretty easily. Yeah. I mean, I don't

(23:56):
know if this guy hit schizophrenia, but there's this guy
on the train a couple of week ago. Already you
say the train. It was just amazing stuff. I mean,
he seemed I can enjoy it because he seemed very happy.
He was not a like you know, he did not
seem to be in misery, but he was like sort
of giving this. He was preaching this kind of apro
futurist message. Um. And it had to do with like
the face on Mars and the Kennedy assassination and like, okay,

(24:20):
there's already red flag Kennedy assassination. Okay, go on. Oh no,
Elvis showed up in it, and there was a whole
time Are you kidding? No, I'm not kidding. I actually
recorded it, and I haven't kicking around here somewhere, but God,
you've gotta please, we've got to put that on Facebook
and somebody if I don't know if we can do audiophiles,
Oh well we we can. I just I guess off
to check and see if this one's kosher, because it
also gets into like the idea that the sun is

(24:41):
racist and has a brain, So it could be it
could be. I don't know, I don't know, but man
was asking questions. There was a lot of interesting data,
but it was like it was so like crazy creative
that it was like that's why I recorded it, you know,
because like this is amazing. I love this well. And
obviously this is someone whose judgment part of the brain
was completely shut off. Yeah, because he's most of is.
Even if we had these thoughts, we wouldn't just spout

(25:02):
them to the entire train full of people. No, No,
I don't normally at least um, but at that point
to that whole madness aspect too, right, Yeah, you have
to be crazy? Do you have to be deeply troubled
to be created? Right? Which is the again another stereotype
that we have about creativity. Um. But I thought it
was interesting I found this um van Go Um, A

(25:23):
couple other folks, Uh, Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll. According
to eve La Plant, who has a book called Seized
of these were people who suffered from temporal lobe seizures,
and so it could very well be that a lot
of the art that they produced, or the or the
or the books and so on and so forth, were

(25:43):
a result of that sort of hallucinatory period um in
which they were seeing things afresh. And if you look
at van Go's work. You can really see that, right,
because it's sort of like it's sort of like he
here's the starry night when right, which is the archetypical
uh van Go painting, and you recognize it. But it
looks like the world has tilted about thirty degrees and

(26:05):
everything is so much brighter and fresher, looking like these
incredible you know, colors popping out. And that's what's so
intriguing about it is because it captures something that's familiar
but at the same time completely alien. So there you go.
I mean, there's there is m that's something that we
have intrinsically thought mad about, you know Van Go and

(26:27):
his paintings. But again, this is very likely just a
side effect of his own temporal lobe seizures. Now, of
course it's you know, important to point out that not
everybody who is intensely creative is crazy or problem but
but but but we often fall back on that, I find.
But that's what I was sort of saying, is that,
you know, people sort of point to that and say, oh, well,

(26:47):
they're just mad that we know so much more now
medically scientifically about conditions that we can say, well, you know,
this unique perspective was brought on by that. But you know,
some people say that you could get that same perspective
from trans transcend all meditation. Oh yeah, the director David Lynch, Yeah,
thirty six years strong, doing that every morning, every night.

(27:09):
And he's completely normal. I mean, he's totally normal. Um,
and his films make perfect sense, they do well makes
pretty yeah. Actually, Um. There's an essay by David Foster
Wallace about donating to read that you do it basically
says like that's the reason why David Lynch can do

(27:31):
with what he can is because he took this one
mainstream job. Um. But what I thought was interesting is
David Lynch was talking about his meditating experience and he says,
it's so beautiful how the enjoyment of beauty blossoms when
the suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity begins to to dissolve. Well,
which is so lynch in. Yeah. But I mean I

(27:51):
I kind of like just last night when I was
having to like like, I got off work, I went
to yoga, and then after yoga, I came home and
had dinner and then worked on this podcast a little more.
And and there's a like a you know, there's a
meditative aspect to yoga and it kind of detached you
and and I can totally get that. I I wish
I had the patients for more like hardcore meditation. Maybe

(28:13):
I'll get there. Did your rubber clown suit dissolve? Yes, well,
I'm I'm a yeah, I'm I'm a proponent of rubber
clown suit yoga, which is one of the newer schools
of yoga. That this is made different from the robot
yoga but the same place, right, Well, yeah, well we
get robot Yoga on Tuesdays and then rubber clown Yoga
is on Fridays. Okay, yeah, well but I think that

(28:36):
again there's this idea of being eccentric um and when
we talk about temporal lobe activity like we were with
van Go, it makes me think about the alien abduction
stories that we looked into. And again here's this case
where Susan Blackmore, who is a psychologist and has really
looked into this from a skeptics point of view. I

(28:58):
visited someone named Chael Personer. I know you guys probably
heard me talk about this before, but he's the guy
who has the God Machine, which has magnets which can
manipulate the frontal lobes so on and so forth. And
what they found is that people have in that area
a high ability or a low ability. And what that
means is that some people have more electro magnets or
excuse me, electro activity going on in the temporal lobes

(29:22):
and other people and those are people that have high abilities.
And those people actually they did some studies on them,
and what they found is that they tend to be
a little bit more creative um and also a little
bit more paranoid to which is interesting. And these are
the people that tend to have these experiences of feeling
like they've been objected before. Interesting. Yeah, so you know,

(29:44):
you've got the explosions in the mind, I think, is
what it's boiling down to. Yeah. Well, I remember the
whole deal with William Blake, Like supposedly he was you know,
as a child, and he had a lot of sort
of craziness going on. I mean, from what i've little
life read about him, he seemed to be a happy guy,
but that he did have some pretty fantastic stuff going

(30:05):
on in his life. Okay, So if I don't want
to use drugs or I don't want to go mad,
but I want to be creative. How do I do
it best? Well, Um, you know, I think some of
the the tips are are kind of out there already,
like the ones the ones that I like, um are
like experiencing new things and you know, to termly because
because the you know, there's a whole argument that time

(30:28):
seems to like we experienced time differently when we're on
vacation because we're seeing everything new for the first time,
and then we experience that time seems to um speed
up as we get older because we're seeing less new
things when we're younger, Like, there's so much that's new,
there's so much that's bright. Wasn't Einstein who said something
about time slowing down when he's talking to a pretty girl? Yeah? Yeah,
he used the whole beautiful woman u um um analogy

(30:51):
to explain relativity. Yeah, such a rogue. Yeah. And he
designed a spaceship that was they would load the whole
of it with five thousand beautiful women and one male
pilot and he would look at a different beautiful woman
each day. And the power the retail the special engines,
but little known NASA project that didn't get off the ground. Yeah,

(31:14):
but so that's one. You know. I think it's like
new new experiences. Uh. And then absorbing like creativity, you know,
reading things, looking at the things that are creative. You know,
you are what you eat kind of a kind of
a situation, um, you know. And uh and also like
as they turn off that judgment center, not being afraid
to ask troubling questions about yourself. Um. Yeah, and thought experiments.

(31:35):
You I thought this was interesting, trying to create a
solution to a problem that you could never really like
something like how do I say it? Like, um, it
would be an experiment that just had no solution. So
how do I get my cat to make something for
me for dinner that I would like to eat? Okay?
You see you asked this one yesterday, and so now

(31:56):
you quantified a little more because that's so I know,
because you started to answ shirt and I was like, no,
no, no no, not a dead bird. I don't want a
dead bird, and I want them to serve it to me. Um.
And I wanted to be seasoned with rosemary. But yeah,
I mean, so the mind starts to play with like, well,
so okay, maybe I can put some treats around I mean,
and again this is engaging your brain in all these
different ways, different ways of thinking. Yeah, or you know,

(32:18):
it's like you mash up two ideas and then you're like,
all right, how does that work? You know as a
as a story or as a or as a piece
of art, or is as music. Um, you know, it's
like a random combination, and then you have to make
sense of it. I really like that view of things.
And and then there's collaboration too. Oh yeah, yeah, as

(32:38):
long as there's not competition, because competition actually makes people
squirrel away their best information and doesn't actually ever create
some sort of group, collective great thing. So you have
to not be a squirrel or aware no, no squirreling. Yeah.
And sleep and dreaming of course, we know. Yeah, sleep,
sleep is big. Actually sleep so your brain can confunction

(33:01):
and can they can do things other than just try
and keep you from tipping over from lack of balance.
And uh and yeah, like we've like we've shown that
our dreams are it's like the mind's defragment or so
you know, let it run every now and then otherwise
that that hard drive is gonna crash. It's going to hard. Um.
Speaking of defragging, we're gonna do you have any defragging

(33:23):
on email here? We do. We have some listener mail
that I'm gonna read here for us. Jane writes in,
and she says, hey, guys, I just wanted to let
you know that in Japanese uh kauai u k a
w aii. Well that's the you know, the English version
of the can't you cute is pronounced co like the
cawing of a crow. So cow because I see I

(33:48):
can't do it? Um okay no wait here it cough
like the cawing of a crow. Wa is in water
and I i uh as in the letter e, so
like hawaii exactly how cute. The way you were pronouncing
it made it sound like kowai, which in Japanese means scary.
It's just the opposite of cute, which is the well.

(34:10):
But then again, like I said, there's that whole kawa
e noir thing which combines. But anyway, just then, just
an f y I, James says, love the podcast, So yes,
thanks for the clarification on that. We actually received a
couple of comments on that from the more uh from
our listeners that are more in tune with the Japanese
language and or Japanese culture. And we also heard from Adam.

(34:34):
Adam wrote in and says, while listening to podcast, I
couldn't help but reflect um and he's talking about the podcasts.
Are you smarter than an ant swarm? He says, I
couldn't help it reflect on on the Middle East and
the protests going on right now. Is social media creating
an emergence intelligence that is shaping our world today? I
hear hear stories of people using Twitter to avoid snipers
and Facebook to organize marches in real time, and it

(34:56):
all seems like something greater than our current understanding. Uh so, yeah,
there's some interesting thought. Yeah. I was looking at um
an rsspeed the other day and actually saw something that
was ranking pretty high, but I didn't have a whole
lot of time to look. But it was something about
Facebook Country asking people um to help them with the
chemical properties of tear gas and how to ameliorate that,

(35:18):
which is kind of interesting. Yeah, they're doing all sorts
of interesting things. Actually, I wrote an article called her
Smartphone is Worth It, and it goes into a little
to the idea of like smartphones being annoying in you know,
modern Western culture, but also goes into how it's and
this was before the protest broke out, how it was
helping to achieve social change in uh in Sub Saharan Africa. Yeah,

(35:41):
which was pretty cool. And indeed, just the other day,
this Nigerian guy contacted me on Facebook and I'm sending
him money to help help out the situation. There is
a deposed king, yes he is. Did you read about
this on a Is there a story on AP or something?
You know? I was contacted as well. Yeah, well let's
kick in. Let's talk about this later, because there's some

(36:02):
really big things happening that you know, I don't want
to share with everybody, but if you want to share
something with us, check us out on Twitter and Facebook.
We are blow the mind on both of those and
we try to keep those updated pretty regularly with all
sorts of cool happenings on how stuff works and elsewhere
on the web. And hey, I was just sitting here thinking,
it is not Damien Hirst, who's the artist who did

(36:24):
the Big Puppy Dog. It is actually Jeff Coon's. Damian
Hirst is the guy that likes to play with animal carcasses,
um entirely different. So there you go. Jeff Coons who
has the team of people helping them. So to that end,
do you, guys, have a team of people helping you?
What sort of things get your creative juices blowing? Let

(36:44):
us know at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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