The Mind, Explained (2019) s02e04 Episode Script

[narrator] 40,000 years ago,
in the middle of the European continent,
someone picked up an old mammoth tusk
and made something extraordinary.
Most of the other hot artists at the time
were depicting things
they saw in the real world,
but our ancient sculptor
carved out something else.
It's one of the oldest imaginary creatures
that we've ever found.
The body of a human
with the head of a lion.
It probably wasn't the first such mash-up,
and it definitely wasn't the last.
[bright jazz music playing]
[narrator] We are a creative species.
Whether we're figuring out
how to efficiently peel apples,
designing a better lawn mower,
or on TikTok stitching videos together
into a ridiculous,
endlessly-expanding collage,
we are all constantly recombining
old ideas to make something new.
But artistic works
and scientific breakthroughs
are seen as something
a step above all that.
We tend to mythologize
the people responsible.
We think they're different
from us somehow,
driven by madness
or blessed by some secret gift.
But creativity isn't mystical.
It's more like a muscle,
and there are ways to train it.
[ding]
In the 1920s, a bunch of surrealists
in Paris came up with one way to do that.
While hanging out at someone's apartment,
they invented a parlor game
called The Exquisite Corpse.
One person would start drawing
whatever popped into their head
and then fold the paper and pass it along.
Each person in turn
would make their own outlandish additions,
ignorant of all but a sliver
of what came before,
until the page was filled and unfolded,
revealing a marvelous,
incongruous monster.
This little game can actually tell us
a lot about how creativity works.
So, let's play.
[man 1] What you're going
to hear about today
is nothing short of a miracle.
[man 2] Beyond the orthodox
and conventional sounds
that we regard as music.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[narrator] Chuck Berry
was the father of rock and roll.
[plays upbeat tune]
You can hear the blend of boogie-woogie,
rhythm and blues, and country music.
In the '50s, people had never
heard anything quite like it.
[cheers and applause]
[narrator] Two decades later,
one of Berry's songs
was etched on a golden record
and sent to space
aboard the Voyager probe.
A shining example of modern music
that we wanted aliens to hear.
[rock and roll playing]
[narrator] By this point, rock and roll's
early stars were long-established.
And back on Earth,
there were countless rock bands
who looked and sounded kind of similar.
[man] There were plenty of other people
doing copies and imitations,
and I just thought,
"You might be having a great time
and it might be successful,
but you're not gonna come up
with something new that way."
[narrator] David Byrne
wanted to be different.
His band, Talking Heads, made music
that was stripped down and weird.
In 1979,
they were working on their third album,
teaming up
with legendary producer Brian Eno.
He had just finished
three innovative records with David Bowie
and would go on to work his magic
with U2 and Coldplay.
Brian believes that there are
little tricks that you can use
to spur creativity.
Ways to kind of disrupt your patterns.
[narrator] He had a set of note cards
he dubbed "oblique strategies,"
that he would pull at random
during studio sessions
to jolt his collaborators
out of creative ruts.
One said, "Cut a vital connection."
Another, just "Water."
And then there was,
"Gardening, not architecture,"
which is basically
Eno's creative philosophy.
You're planting something
and seeing how it grows,
rather than trying to completely
constrain it and know every detail of it.
Brian Eno may have formalized
some of these disruptive ways of thinking,
but I think people do that all the time.
"What if we did this,
you know, twice as fast?"
"What if we did this as a country song?"
"What if I turned these words inside out
and made the last verse
into the first verse?"
[narrator] For one song,
Eno and Byrne wrote parts in isolation
and then grafted them together.
A kind of musical Exquisite Corpse.
For another, Eno suggested
that instead of writing lyrics,
they adapt a 60-year-old nonsense poem.
[man] Gadji beri bimba gladridi
laula lonni cadori.
[narrator] These words were made up
by German poet Hugo Ball
back in the middle of World War I.
He was horrified by the war
and wanted to shock people
into seeing the senselessness of it all,
so he helped start the Dada art movement.
This is Ball
performing one of his nonsense poems.
The absurdity was the point.
[Byrne] These kind of nonsense things
weren't frivolous.
They were actually allowing people
to break from nationalistic thinking
and dangerous mental traps.
[narrator] Decades later, Ball's poem
became the lyrics of a rock song.
And as for the song's music,
that sprang from a different source.
It was quite by accident.
I was shopping at a record store
in Times Square.
and they had what was then called
the international section.
And I picked up some records
purely because of their covers,
and brought 'em home
and kind of had my mind blown.
[narrator] He had stumbled upon
African pop music.
[Byrne] They were using instruments
that were familiar to me,
but using them in a different way.
[narrator] Afropop combines some elements
of Western music
with the rhythms and melodies
of the mbira,
these thumb pianos
that have been around for centuries.
African guitarists
adapted those plucking patterns.
You can hear it on this track from 1974.
[plucking pattern playing]
That became
really inspiring.
[narrator] The Talking Heads
released their new album in 1979
and the first track was called "I Zimbra."
You can hear the echoes of Afropop.
[rock music
with elements of Afropop plays]
And then Hugo Ball's words.
Gadji beri bimba ♪
[narrator] Two sources of inspiration
from two different continents
combined into something totally new.
Critics called it
the best album of the year
and a quantum leap for the band.
I tend to believe,
and I might be wrong here
I tend to believe
that everybody is creative,
and I would love it if neuroscience
could verify any of that,
but that might be
a little ways down the line.
[man] You just asked the big question.
That brings us up to the brain.
Man possesses a brain that gives him
the capacity of imagination.
[narrator] Albert Einstein
once told a friend,
"I want to be cremated so people
don't come to worship at my bones."
But when he passed, the doctor
who performed the autopsy took his brain.
It was preserved, sliced up,
and put on display at museums.
Scientists obsessively studied
every wrinkle,
looking for some feature
that could explain
how he came up
with all of those revolutionary ideas.
But some argue that Einstein's brain
actually looks pretty normal.
[woman] If you see something different
about Einstein's brain,
that doesn't necessarily mean all people
that have that particular abnormality
would be a genius like Einstein,
because every brain is slightly different.
[narrator] Besides,
creativity is far too complex
to live in one particular corner
of the brain, or even one half of it.
[Berlin] It's not like all logical
thinking is the left hemisphere
and all creative thinking
is the right hemisphere.
[narrator] That's a myth.
Instead, creativity emerges
when different regions talk to each other.
In particular, two important networks.
[Berlin] One of which is called
the default mode network,
which tends to be active
when we are sort of internally focused,
when we're just letting our minds go,
like when we're daydreaming.
That's when you can come up with
these really creative, interesting ideas.
[narrator] But when you start
to focus on a task,
when you start to direct your thinking
[Berlin] Then you activate
another network of the brain
called the executive control network,
and that kind of evaluates
the things you're coming up with.
[narrator] So we need the first network
to help us make
spontaneous new connections
and the second one
to judge which of those ideas is any good.
In the brains of highly creative people,
these two networks are more connected.
They talk to each other more.
Sometimes, if you're just looking
to get ideas flowing,
it can help
to do something else for a while.
Whatever lets your mind wander.
Or maybe get a little tipsy.
One study found
that can facilitate sudden insights.
[Berlin] Sleep can help,
actually, as well.
[Byrne] You wake up the next morning
and you kind of have
a little bit of the answer.
I often trust my subconscious
or unconscious.
I'll go, "Trust it a little bit.
Let's see where it goes."
The whole idea is to try to let go
and lose your sense of self
and let your unconscious take over.
- [beatboxing]
- [rapping]
[narrator] You could say you'd better
lose yourself in the music, the moment.
[rapping]
[man] Boom.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] In 2011, researchers watched
the brains of rappers
while they were freestyling.
As you might expect, their daydreaming
default network was turned up.
Parts of their executive network
were turned down, but not all the way.
It's not just random words,
so you still have to have some executive
control monitoring what's happening.
Daydreaming inspiration
can be there as a seed,
but then one has to kind of
nurture that seed
and make it turn into something.
It's very much a kind of work.
[narrator] It takes focus.
You have to make dedicated time
in your schedule
for your executive network
to prune out bad ideas
and pursue the best ones.
Without that, you're just a person
with a wild imagination.
And we've all been that person.
Every little child
has no inhibition about doing anything.
Whether it's playing instruments,
drumming on something,
or making up a song.
[narrator] But our early creations
just aren't very good.
We need to learn technical skills
and cultural context
so we can make things that resonate with
the moment or solve some societal need.
[Berlin] It is true,
as our brain develops,
it kind of filters our behaviors
and our thoughts
to make sure that they are logical,
they make sense,
they conform to social norms,
which is good.
[narrator] But conforming
is really the opposite of creativity.
You're doing what's been done before.
Which to me is tragic.
[Berlin] A lot of creative adults
try to get into their childlike mind
where anything goes.
[man] All artists have that feeling
of childish curiosity.
It's a form of escape
into the world of make-believe.
To be truthful, sir, um,
comedy is a passion of mine.
Yeah, right. Tell me one joke.
[audience laughs]
[narrator] In improv,
performers of every age
access a childlike imagination.
I think what made me start liking it
is that the adults
would act like big kids.
[narrator] Shows often start
with a suggestion.
I need a suggestion
of a job where you work with animals.
- A prompt, if you will.
- [overlapping chatter]
- What's that?
- [woman] Ham.
Okay. Ham.
[narrator] And based just on that,
they make up a scene on the spot.
A story that's surprising and funny.
If you're like most people, that seems
terrifying.
I'm always scared when I'm doing improv.
You're afraid,
"I might say something stupid."
[narrator] Faith and Jewel started
taking classes with The Improv Project
their freshman year of high school.
I wanted to make the class laugh,
but nothing came to mind,
so I would just sit down.
[narrator] Even the most creative people,
when faced with unbounded possibility,
come up with boring, obvious stuff.
Let's say you just said, in general,
"Name things that are green,"
the most obvious salient thing
will usually come up.
Like green grass, or frogs, or trees.
But then, if you give me
what we call a cue,
like, "Name all the green things in Paris
at the turn of the century,"
that's going to then activate
some other neural network,
and then maybe
I start thinking of, like, absinthe.
[narrator] Or Picasso's paints,
or the luminescent chemicals
in Marie Curie's lab.
It's the same principle
as Eno's oblique strategies.
An outside-the-box prompt
challenges the mind
to explore less trafficked neighborhoods.
A blank page is uninspiring, but if you
have a few short lines to start from,
you might go
in a more surprising direction.
And for improvisers,
the most specific, helpful clues
come not from the audience,
but from other performers.
You've primarily got to listen
to what your partner is saying.
You have to adapt.
That's what makes the best scene.
That gets the best characters.
[narrator] Improv's mantra is "Yes and"
Embrace whatever your scene partner
sends your way, and then add to it.
You might start with a pretty basic scene.
A job interview at Google.
Your résumé looks certainly interesting.
It says here that you have a Google car.
Mm-hmm.
- Mmm
- Dedicated.
I just want you to know
that we haven't come out with those.
What you've been sold is a rip-off.
I saw it outside the window.
It's just a white Jeep.
I paid five million for that car.
[narrator] Out of nothing,
Faith has invented this very wealthy,
but gullible character.
An ordinary job interview
got a lot more interesting.
Do not over-think it.
It takes all the fun out.
That's probably why I hated it,
'cause I was like,
"Oh, dang, what am I gonna do about this?"
"What character am I gonna build?"
Just let it flow.
[narrator] But like freestyling rappers,
a good improviser can't completely
turn off their executive network.
[Berlin] If doing a live performance,
you check in with the audience.
How did they respond?
[narrator] And often,
they don't respond well.
But that's part of the training too,
as a veteran improviser
once explained in an interview.
You learn how to fail,
because you mostly fail.
[narrator] But not taking yourself
too seriously
doesn't come so naturally to everyone.
[woman] If I fail, it's no big deal.
I'm earning some sort of experience
I can use somewhere else.
So I just kind of work without fear
because it's fun for me.
So my career started
because I built the toothbrush helmet.
It's recommended
by zero out of ten dentists,
but has still managed
to have a really big impact on my life.
I was just, like, a straight-A student.
I would cry if I got a B on a test.
I would push myself really, really hard.
I put so much pressure on myself,
and I still have that in some aspects
where I'm, like, too scared to try.
And in an effort
to, like, lower the pressure on myself,
to break free from perfectionism,
I decided to just build things
that set out to fail.
[narrator] It's easy to get the impression
that some people never fail,
but the creative journey
is almost always a bumpy one.
For example, an analysis
of the sketches Picasso made
as he prepared to paint
his masterpiece Guernica
don't show a smooth progression
toward the final version.
There's a lot of backtracking
and missteps.
Here's the bull in the completed painting,
and here's the series of sketches
that led up to it.
Simone's YouTube channel
documented a lot of ups and downs,
but those failures brought success.
Please welcome Simone Giertz.
Thanks so much for being here.
- You're welcome. You're very welcome.
- [cheers and applause]
[narrator] But Simone's
more recent projects are a bit different.
They work.
Like this paper shredder
based on the shape of her own brain.
One of the very few perks
of going through brain surgery
is that you get a bunch of MRI scans.
The kind of turning chapter for me
was that I had a brain tumor
and I went through some [inhales deeply]
really hard months or years
where I had very limited energy.
[narrator] So she decided to spend
what energy she had
on things that were functional.
Converting a Tesla into a pickup truck.
Building a chair
to accommodate her needy dog.
In one video, Simone's team challenged her
to make something useful
out of a random piece of junk.
[chuckling] This is so random.
I want to turn this one
into a kibble dispenser.
[narrator] And then she did.
In another video, she picked suggestions
from her audience out of a jar.
- Coffee table.
- [man] I like a coffee table.
I like a coffee table too.
- Matches!
- [man laughs] Yeah.
[narrator] And then she made it.
Sometimes it doesn't make sense,
but you just roll with it
and you go off of what you get.
[narrator] It's helpful to have a sort of
"yes and" approach to your life.
Dealing with uncertainty
and kind of rolling with the punches.
[narrator] If you bounce around
trying different things,
you might worry
that you'll never get good at any of them.
But it turns out
that kind of aimless curiosity
is a perfect foundation for creativity.
[theme music playing]
[man 1] Escape into the world
of the brain.
[man 2] Beyond the orthodox
and conventional.
[woman] Work without fear because
[man 3] the capacity of imagination
[man 4] is nothing short of a miracle.
[narrator] Creativity is just
combining things in new ways.
So the more experiences
you expose yourself to,
the more raw material
you have to work with.
People who tend to score high
on open-mindedness,
who are more open to experience,
tend to be the people
who are more on the edges
in the extremes of creativity.
What I tell myself is, if I wake up
one morning and I'm like, "Orchids."
"I love orchids.
I want to make videos about orchids,"
then that's fine.
[narrator] Charles Darwin
seemed to follow that creed,
flitting between zoology and botany,
geology, even psychology.
He studied earthworms for decades
and even wrote a book about orchids.
A study of scientists found that those
with a lifetime of breakthroughs
bounced between different topics
more often than their mediocre colleagues.
And a lot of them
made art or music on the side.
David Byrne has also been
an intellectual nomad of sorts,
experimenting with theater and dance,
starting a record label to promote
music from Latin America and Africa,
even directing and starring in a movie.
[Byrne] If one thing does not succeed,
you've got other things
you can fall back on.
The projects inform one another.
You learn a skill that could be
definitely useful in other areas.
[narrator] And one of the greatest
sources of inspiration is other people.
One study found that dating people
from other cultures
makes you more creative.
You learn to think more flexibly.
It seems to have worked for Marie Curie.
And Picasso.
And the Einsteins.
Crossing a border
and leaving your comfort zone
forces the mind to explore new territory.
People who've lived in foreign countries,
score higher on tests of creativity,
but only if they really engage
with the culture.
A spring break trip to Cancun won't help.
Whenever brains collide,
there's potential
for creative sparks to fly.
The creator of the term "brainstorming"
believed those collisions
had to be as gentle as possible.
"Creativity is so delicate a flower,"
he wrote,
"that praise tends to make it bloom."
But that's not quite right.
When brainstormers only praise each other,
studies show they have fewer ideas
and less creative ideas
than if they just worked alone.
But when they're encouraged
to debate and criticize,
they perform best of all.
Still, there are times you have to ignore
the critics and follow your own vision.
You have to be so passionate about what
you're doing in the face of criticism.
You have to have, again,
this unreasonable faith
in something that doesn't exist.
You have a fictional narrative
in your head
that this thing will come to pass.
I say to myself,
"I'm gonna do better in this scene."
"I'm gonna come up with something
really good and it's gonna be funny,
and everybody's gonna like it."
If you get that label as, "Oh, that person
probably knows how to do it,"
you're gonna figure it out.
It's the same as there's
a disproportionate amount of dentists
named Dennis.
It's like, "Oh, my name is Dennis.
I can probably be a dentist."
"I'll figure it out."
[narrator] And if you're totally stuck,
take a walk,
take a sip of wine,
take a suggestion from the audience,
take a slip of paper out of a jar
and see what new ideas unfold.
[tinkling]
I'll figure it out.
[closing theme music playing]