Have we forgotten how to play?

Play is how we evolved to learn, solve problems, and navigate the world. So why do we treat it as optional? This hour, the science of play — and what happens when we don’t get enough of it. Guests include psychology researcher Peter Gray, sailor and social activist Tracy Edwards and photographer Stefen Chow. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://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 https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:14Manoush Zomorodi?

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  Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. We're going to start in the 1950s in Illinois and a small farming town called Sheldon. Sheldon's fields were filled with rich black soil. On the farms, there were lots of livestock. And out in the wild, plenty of rabbits, squirrels, foxes, and birds. But there was also one species that was not welcome: the Japanese beetle. Japanese beetles were eating crops.

• 1:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  And so the county was flying small airplanes across the farmland, spraying the fields with pesticides. This was happening all over the country. The beetles died, but so did blue jays, brown thrashers, cardinals, wrackles, and bluebirds. Robins, as a report noted at the time, were almost annihilated. And Sheldon, Illinois, became a case study at the heart of a book that came out a few years later: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

• 2:01Speaker 06

  She painted a really eerie picture of what would spring be like without the sounds of birds.

• 2:09Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Peter Gray. He was a young man when the book was published, and he remembers how it became a huge hit and had a major influence on American culture.

• 2:18Speaker 06

  Ultimately, it led to the environmental movement.

• 2:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  The environmental movement led to pesticide bans, land conservation efforts, and a new appreciation for wildlife, especially birds.

• 2:31Speaker 06

  And we now have, birds are back. I happen to be living in a place where I can see hawks regularly, occasional eagles flying over, lots of birds of all sorts of species in my backyard. It's no longer a silent spring in terms of bird sounds.

• 2:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  But Peter Gray, who is now a renowned evolutionary biologist and researcher of child psychology and neuroscience at Boston College, well, he says there is another stunning silence that urgently needs our attention: the lack of children's voices outside playing.

• 3:11Speaker 06

  We have a different kind of silent spring now.

• 3:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  Compare that to when Peter was growing up in the 1950s.

• 3:17Speaker 06

  If school wasn't in session and it was daylight, there would pretty much always be children outdoors. You could find them in the parks, you could find them playing on sidewalks, you could find them-- on school days, they'd be walking to school and laughing and joking as they're on their way to school and then on their way home.

• 3:38Manoush Zomorodi?

  But over time, kids became restricted to how, when, and where they could play. And as a result--

• 3:46Speaker 06

  We aren't hearing the sounds of children because the children are not outdoors.

• 3:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  Without play, Peter says, we're limiting the potential of an entire generation of humans.

• 3:56Speaker 06

  All young mammals play. As far as we know, all young mammals play. And play is really an essential part of their growing up. Play is how they practice the kinds of skills, how they practice the independence that is required to grow up, to become ultimately an adult.

• 4:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  So today on the show, how play shapes who we are from our earliest years through adulthood, and why missing out on it can have huge mental health effects later in life. The author of the new book, Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety, Peter Gray, tracks the trends and changes from the 1960s onward that led to a decrease in kids and teens' freedom to play, why he thinks this is linked to rising rates of mental health struggles in young people today, and what changes he thinks we should make to kids' lives right now. But before we look forward, Peter says we need to look back.

• 4:59Speaker 06

  From an evolutionary perspective, the task of childhood is to become independent of parents. So children are born with very strong drives to play, to explore, away from adults. That away from adults is a big part of it because they need to get away from adults in order to practice the skills required for becoming an adult: the skills of making their own decisions, solving their own problems, negotiating their own differences with peers, and so on and so forth. So when I was a kid in the 1950s, the way we'd play baseball, we'd go out to the vacant

• 5:42Speaker 06

  lot, there'd be other kids there, we'd make up our game. And in the process, we would be learning a lot of things way more important than how to bat a ball or pitch a ball. We'd be learning how to negotiate with our peers, how to create rules for the game that satisfied the conditions where we were, how to choose up teams. So we were learning a lot of very important skills that are important throughout your life.

• 6:09Manoush Zomorodi?

  You know, my understanding was that particularly during the Industrial Revolution, so, you know, sort of, let's say, 1850 to about roughly 1950, the kids worked. Families were large because they needed kids to work in the fields. They were allowed, at younger and younger ages, to work in factories. Are we just talking about a nostalgia for a period that was actually maybe just a blip in US history or even Western history? This, like, idealized 50s and post-World War II?

• 6:43Speaker 06

  The industrial era was a terrible time for many children who worked at sweatshops, who were, in some sense, slave laborers. Depending on your view, your long-term or short-term view of history, that could be regarded as a blip, right? When I looked at hunter-gatherer cultures, for example, we were all hunter-gatherers for 99% of our biological origin. In hunter-gatherer cultures, children are free to play and explore all day long. You know, children have chores, they may be tending the flocks of sheep, or they may be apprentices at a certain age, but they also have a lot of freedom within that.

• 7:23Speaker 06

  And they have a lot of respect because they're actually contributing economically to the culture. But they still, even as they are so-called working, they're playing as they work. And they're often involved with other children as they're doing it. So I think that what happened is that this first half of the 20th century, you could say, you know, nostalgia, but it really was more similar to the way children had freedom in more traditional cultures.

• 7:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's funny, you were talking about the 50s, but I grew up in the 70s and the 80s. And that was still a time when parents would say, go play, and kick you out of the house. In fact, I knew one mom who would lock the back door, like, don't come back till dinner. But you say that something changed in the United States, that-- or maybe it was elsewhere as well. Tell me what you saw that changed.

• 8:19Speaker 06

  It wasn't just one change. It was a lot of things. And accumulatively, over time, between about 1955 or 1960 and the end of the 20th century, there were more and more constraints on children's abilities to act freely. One of those changes was an increase in the amount of time children had to spend at school and at homework. The school year increased by five weeks. So the whole month was taken away from summer vacation and another week during the year. But even more significantly, we began to expect even elementary school children to continue to do schoolwork once they were home.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  Homework was not really a thing for elementary school students in the 1950s and 1960s, at least not at most schools. So we began to chip away at children's freedom by giving them more and more time at school. That was one change.

• 9:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  Other changes were happening, too.

• 9:24Speaker 06

  Really beginning in the 1960s, we began to encourage children to go into adult-directed sports.

• 9:34Manoush Zomorodi?

  Little League baseball, Pee-wee football. These organizations began to take the place of pickup games in neighborhoods.

• 9:42Speaker 06

  You're being told what to do by the coaches.

• 9:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  And in the 1950s, screens started to eat into playtime.

• 9:49Speaker 06

  You could go home from school and watch Mickey Mouse Club on television, beginning in the late 1950s, instead of staying outside playing with other kids.

• 9:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  At first glance, other transformations in American life back then might not seem related to play at all, like the size of houses.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  Houses got much bigger over this time, and families got much smaller.

• 10:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  But as houses grew and families shrank--

• 10:15Speaker 06

  There's less inducement for parents to shoo the children outdoors. And there's less inducement for the children to go outdoors, where you would find other kids.

• 10:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  There were also fewer spaces for kids to be unsupervised outside. Public playgrounds disappeared for fear of lawsuits, and parenting became synonymous with supervision. The government, he says, reinforced those beliefs.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  --to be arrested in front of her children, all because her then-10-year-old son was spotted walking alone in Mineral Bluff, Georgia--

• 10:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  --after a mom was sentenced to jail time and put on a child abuse registry for letting her five-year-old go for a walk by himself.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Parents say they never thought letting him go to a playground blocks away would--

• 11:00Speaker 06

  Lead to child neglect investigation.

• 11:04Speaker 06

  So there was a whole set of changes that resulted over time that reduced the likelihood that kids would be meeting up with other kids and playing and exploring independently of adults.

• 11:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  At the same time, you note that the rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide increased. Are you saying that those two things are directly correlated?

• 11:32Speaker 06

  Yes, I think they absolutely are. I think there's always been a lot of evidence in clinical psychology that people who have what's called an internal locus of control, which another term for that might be agency, a sense of I can take care of myself, I can solve problems, bumps in the road can happen and I can deal with them, that mental sap produces good mental health. If you have what's called an external locus of control, that I'm sort of a victim of powerful other people and circumstances around me, that correlates with poor mental health. This is true regardless of age. So how do you develop

• 12:14Speaker 06

  an internal locus of control? You develop by practice having control. So when we prevent children from doing these things where they are in control, as when they're playing or exploring or doing things independently of adults, we are depriving them of the opportunity to develop this sense of agency, this sense of an internal locus of control, which is going to lead to high anxiety and depression. It leads to a kind of sense of helplessness, among other things. And a big part of the definition of depression is helplessness.

• 12:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  When we come back, more with evolutionary biologist and childhood psychology professor Peter Gray. We'll get into how school has curbed kids' ability to play and what parents, teachers, and the public can do to change that. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

• 13:27Manoush Zomorodi?

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• 15:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi. On the show today, how play shapes our lives, why it's crucial for kids' development and their mental health. We're talking to Boston College psychology research professor Peter Gray. So we've heard that kids today are struggling with soaring rates of anxiety, depression, and that screens and smartphones and social media are mostly to blame. Peter Gray is skeptical of that argument.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  There is no meaningful correlation between the amount of time that young people spend on this technology and their mental health. This is true regardless of gender, regardless of age of the young people being looked at. I don't want to say that it's not a problem at all, or that it's not a problem for some kids, but the evidence that that is what accounted for the fairly sharp increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people beginning in 2010 is countered by all the lines of research that I've been able to look at.

• 16:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  By making big tech the boogeyman, Peter says we're ignoring what the kids are actually telling us is the problem.

• 16:25Speaker 06

  Whenever children of any age, whether they're elementary school, middle school, or high school students, are surveyed about the causes of their anxiety and depression, school comes out way on top.

• 16:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  In his new book, Restoring Childhood, he lays out how opportunities for kids to play freely and independently have been vanishing since the 1960s, a trend that accelerated as the economy became more globalized and more competitive.

• 17:00Speaker 06

  Over time, from the 1980s on, there has been an increased gap between rich and poor. If you look across nations, as well as over time within a given nation, the bigger the gap between rich and poor, the more motivated parents are to try to control their children's lives in a way that might be regarded as producing a positive resume. Now, play doesn't go on a resume.

• 17:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 06

  So you want your child to do well in school. You believe somehow doing well in school is going to protect their economic future.

• 17:40Manoush Zomorodi?

  Sure.

• 17:41Speaker 06

  So there begins to be a lot of achievement pressure on children that has two effects regarding mental health. One is, the more time is spent on these things, the less opportunity there is to play and explore and learn what you need to learn to have an internal locus of control, a sense of agency. But also, you are experiencing this pressure. You're experiencing this message that may or may not be stated overtly, that somehow if you don't succeed in school, if you don't get all As, you don't make the honors group, or if you don't make the traveling team on the sports, that you are, in some sense, a failure

• 18:24Speaker 06

  in life. There are a lot of young people, a lot of kids suffering, feeling like they're failures because they're not living up to what they perceive to be the achievement expectations on them.

• 18:41Speaker 06

  The most recent sharp increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people beginning in 2010 coincided with a radical change in schooling in the United States called Common Core. Common Core state standards began to be adopted by most states in the United States in 2010. This made school even more regimented, because now teachers, principals, whole schools were going to be evaluated based upon standardized tests given to the students.

• 19:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  To make sure their students were keeping up with Common Core standards and to get federal funding, states had to measure student proficiency in English comprehension and math at every grade level from K through 12. This was part of a process that's now referred to as schoolification, where education focused more on metrics and test scores.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  And so, school became even more stressful by everybody's reports. Teachers, principals, kids, school psychologists, all said school was becoming more stressful because of Common Core. And so, it should not be surprising that once Common Core went into effect, we saw yet a new increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among school-aged students.

• 20:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  That focus on test scores meant that kids didn't have time to pursue their own interests and passions in school. Here's how Peter put it on the TED stage.

• 20:15Speaker 06

  How does school thwart passions? The answer to that is almost too obvious. It does so by distinguishing between learning, which is called work, and play, which is clearly separated from learning. It's a break from learning called recess, if it exists at all at school. But anybody who's involved in a passion or interest knows that at least when you're involved in that interest, work and play and learning are all one and the same thing.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  What we really need today is people who are creative, people who have good people skills, good social skills, people who feel comfortable in their own skin, and people who believe they can learn on the job. People who are self-directed and confident. And that's not what our school system is producing.

• 21:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  So let's talk about, you have actually helped design some programs for schools to increase play. And I was just reading that there are several states that have, like, for example, New Hampshire, they are mandating now play-based kindergarten as opposed to learning to read or write at that age. Is that what this requires? Is it about states leading the way? What does a more playful type of school look like? What would you like to see?

• 21:43Speaker 06

  I think what we are seeing now is baby steps, and that's certainly better than no steps at all. So there are some states that are adding more recess. There are some states who have finally figured out that early academic training does no good in the long run and, in fact, does considerable harm. Every study that I've been able to find that is a well-controlled study that looks at the effect of academic training in preschool and kindergarten has shown that it has long-term negative effects. Negative effects on mental health, but even on academic performance. So by third or fourth grade, those who were in the group that had early academic training

• 22:27Speaker 06

  are performing worse on reading, math, science, all academic tests than those who didn't. What we're doing is we're burning kids out early on. We're turning them off to school, and it's having long-term harmful effects by doing that.

• 22:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's a hard lesson to hear as a parent, Peter, I think. You know, you try to give your kid as many opportunities as you possibly can in this day and age because everything just feels so competitive. And what you're saying is, like, maybe you should just chill out a little bit. Is that what you're saying?

• 23:05Speaker 06

  I think that we really need, at all levels, everybody in this society really needs to think about, what are the changes that we need to make kids free? There's no question but what kids need freedom, both for immediate happiness and to develop the kinds of attitudes and the skills and the characteristics like a sense of agency that are essential for long-term happiness. Pushing them academically along these narrow academic routes is harmful to children in the long run. There's research showing that the kids

• 23:48Speaker 06

  who are suffering the most, actually, are those who are attending so-called high-achievement schools. The ones that pride themselves in getting kids into Ivy League colleges and the like, and pride themselves in high test scores. There's a lot of research showing the rates of anxiety and depression among students at those schools is higher even than the national average, which is already very high.

• 24:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, it seems like a values issue that we're talking about, that we have stopped saying, like, a person who enjoys the work/play that they do, that is what we want for our kids. Instead, we're saying, you know, I think we're so nervous about making sure that they just have enough to live on and feel, so many people feel so financially precarious that they just don't want that for their child because we know, there's a lot of parents who are stressed out as well. And that leads to this feeling that, like, I don't want this for my kid. I want to give them the opportunity that I didn't get.

• 24:54Speaker 06

  Right. And I think we also have to think about the difference between giving them an opportunity and forcing them along a track. So it's one thing to say, if my child wants to go to Harvard and takes the initiative to do the things that they want to do, they've made that decision. There's nothing wrong with that. But if I say, I want my kid to go to Harvard, and I'm going to control my kid in such a way to try to get him into Harvard, that is extraordinarily toxic on the child. There are lots of ways in our society today

• 25:38Speaker 06

  to make a living, to do well in our society, that kids who are spending all their time in school don't even know about. They don't have time to explore it. They don't have time to consider this possibility. And so one of the things that happens when you have adequate time to play and explore and figure out who you are, is you discover yourself. You discover who you are, what you like to do. And because you've had a lot of opportunity to plan your days and your weeks, nobody's planning all that for you, you become pretty good at thinking ahead and making plans. And you figure out, what is it that I need to do to do what I want to do in this world as an adult?

• 26:22Speaker 06

  And we are depriving young people of the opportunity to do that because we're keeping them busy all the time with stuff that we are requiring them to do rather than allowing them to discover what they really like to do.

• 26:38Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was author and researcher Peter Gray. He is a research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College. His book is called Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety.

• 26:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  On the show today, how play shapes who we are and how some lessons could never happen in the classroom. Hey, Tracy, are you there?

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Hi, how are you?

• 27:09Manoush Zomorodi?

  Hey, I'm doing well. I'm thrilled to hear your voice. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Oh, not at all.

• 27:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Tracy Edwards.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  My name is Tracy Edwards. I am a round-the-world sailor and a social activist.

• 27:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  Well, you're a record-breaking round-the-world sailor, a social activist. But is it also fair to say you are also someone who did not thrive at school? Like, you were not a good student?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think "not a good student" would be the understatement of the century.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  I was just about opposite to everything you would hope to have in a daughter. And thank goodness, my daughter is totally different from me. I had a difficult time during my teenage years. My father died when I was 10, and my mother married unbeknownst to her, obviously, an abusive alcoholic. It just didn't make for a happy teenager. And I rebelled quite spectacularly. I hung around with a group of kids who, I guess, we were all fighting against something. And, you know, we were drinking and staying out all night. I was aggressive, angry. I was so angry all the time.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  And I stopped going to school because I was being bullied at school. I didn't tell my parents, I just stopped going. And what really brought things to a head was I stole a car, was arrested.

• 28:40Manoush Zomorodi?

  Wow.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then was eventually expelled from school.

• 28:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  What, like, what did you do? What did your mom do?

• 28:48Speaker 03

  My poor mother. My mother took a long, hard look at me and said, right, that something has to change. You know, you're obviously not happy. I think you are not in the right place, and you need to go and find what it is you're looking for, which is very brave of her at the age of, you know, I was 15.

• 29:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  Wow, yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  But at 16, I left home, and I went backpacking to Greece and ended up working in a bar in Greece, which is how I ended up getting onto boats.

• 29:20Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, I got to say, it is kind of remarkable that your mom gave you permission to leave school and to go to Greece.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  I mean, it was incredibly brave of her. I mean, she said to me, every human being is good at at least one thing. You have just got to go and find what that one thing is. And then she said, you know, once you've found it, you know, it will change your life. And I dread to think where I would have ended up if she hadn't let me do that.

• 29:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  So at 16, Tracy was on her own, in Greece, working as what was then called a stewardess on a boat, basically cleaning up after wealthy guests on luxury yachts.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  So, I mean, it was hard work, but when you're sailing around the Greek islands, you know, you can kind of put up with anything. I just felt, this is me. I've just landed on my feet. I've fallen over my own path. And for me, it wasn't necessarily the ocean or the sailing to start off with. That came later. It was the people. I felt like I found my tribe. All of us were running away from something. We were nomads and wanderers, if you like. And I just, I slid right in there.

• 30:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  Okay, so you said you didn't start working on boats because you loved sailing, but you eventually did learn to love sailing, and it involved your skipper.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  How did that happen?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  So I was doing my second transatlantic, and he said to me, can you navigate? And I said, of course I can't navigate, you know. I was expelled before long division, you know. I mean, no. And, you know, he looked at me and he said, well, what are you going to do if I fall over the side? And I said, well, you know, I'll use the, whatever that is, the navigational stuff. He said, you know, what if the batteries go down? I'm like, oh, for goodness sake, I don't know. I'll shout, "Help!" And he looked at me and he said, why are you a bystander in your own life? You're supposed to be playing the starring role in your own life. And I just thought, by me, that's a bit profound

• 31:40Speaker 03

  for two days out into the Atlantic. But I thought, wow, he's right. And in two days, he taught me to navigate. He taught me how to use a sextant, a book of tables, charts, and it was one of the The most profound moments of my life. And I fell in love with navigation then. And I have never lost that passion for it. You know, being able to tell wherever you are in the world with a few basic set of instruments. It's amazing.

• 32:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  And did you think, you know, forget doing the washing? This is, I gotta find my way across various oceans.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Uh, not really, because, um.

• 32:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  No?

• 32:22Speaker 03

  Well, because women didn't do that. Um, I could navigate, but I wasn't allowed to at that time. This is 35, 40 years ago. You got on and you, your job was cook or stewardess. So I kind of put that to one side, I guess, in my mind.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  I sailed many oceans, so the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, the Seychelles. But I knew in the back of my mind that this type of cruising was probably not for me forever. I needed something else. There was something missing, but I didn't know what it was.

• 33:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  In a minute, Tracy Edwards on forming a record-breaking all-female crew to circumnavigate the world. On the show today, the transformative effects of a more playful approach to life. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Cornerpiece, a podcast from TED. If you've ever stayed up at 2:00 AM wondering why some friendships last while others fall apart, or whether unconditional love actually exists, this show is for you. Check out Cornerpiece wherever you listen.

• 33:53Speaker 05

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• 34:38Speaker 05

  Ts and Cs apply.

• 34:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today, we're talking about play and learning. And we were just talking to sailor and social activist Tracy Edwards about how she struggled in school as a kid. So she ended up moving to Greece at age 16, where she discovered she loved sailing and working on boats. But after completing many impressive sailing expeditions, Tracy still felt she needed more of a challenge.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  And then I heard about the 85, 86 Whitbread Around the World Race.

• 35:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  What is the Whitbread for people who've never heard of it?

• 35:21Speaker 03

  The Whitbread Around the World Race is the toughest yacht race in the world. It starts and finishes in the UK, and it's 32,000 miles, and it's nine months. And it was the pinnacle of ocean racing, you know, the, the peak of what guys wanted to achieve. I didn't really know that then. I just thought it looked like good fun. But girls don't do it. There's just no way I would have got on a boat as anything other than a cook. But I was, you know, okay, fine, I'll, I'll do that. So I did the 85, 86 Whitbread on a boat called Atlantic Privateer, which was very aptly named because they were a complete bunch of pirates, these guys. I mean, I, I adored them, but I could have killed them a lot of times as well.

• 36:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  You were the only woman on the boat for nine months?

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  Traveling the world on a, that's it? Like, just you?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, we were, we were racing. So you're racing around the world, so it's very focused. It's very professional. You know, there were 26 boats, I think, in that race. So 260 crew, and there were three girls.

• 36:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  Okay. So you hear about this around-the-world race, and you decide, hmm, sounds fun. Even though I don't think you had ever been in a race, and there were hardly any other women, I mean, were you scared?

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Um, no, not really. I, they were, they were such great sailors, and I learned so much from them. And when we finished the race nine months later, in April 1986, I just thought, wow, I have got to do that again. But I don't want to be a cook. I want to go around as a navigator. And, you know, I had this really, again, a very profound moment when I realized, no male crew is ever going to allow you to be a navigator. It's not going to happen. And that was the first time in my life I, I felt that I was being prevented from doing something I wanted to do because I was a girl. Because to my mom, it was no surprise.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  You know, she was like, oh, well, welcome to the real world.

• 37:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  But, you know, she said another thing, which was, again, which set me off on a, on another course, which was, she said, if you don't like the way the world looks, change it. Don't moan about it. Change it.

• 37:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Your mom.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Oh, she was an amazing woman. I miss her so much.

• 37:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  So I thought, well, how, how do I change it? Okay, um, well, I have to have my own boat.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  I guess I have to have my own boat, which means I have to have my own team. And let's make it a team of girls so that we can prove to men that we can do this. So, I mean, it wasn't, it didn't start off being this, you know, rah rah, let's prove women can do stuff. It was a selfish reason initially, because I wanted to navigate. And it was only really when we announced this first all-female cruise sail around the world, to much laughter and derisory comments, that I thought, right, okay, I am now doing this for every woman in the world.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  You know, women would turn up on my doorstep and go, right, point to me in the direction where I can help, you know? And they'd be, uh, okay, well, you can stuff those sponsorship envelopes, or you can go into that boat show and try and raise us some money. I mean, some of us had two, three jobs at the same time. And of course, around us, all these multimillion-pound male racing teams, you know, with their shiny boats and their shiny crew, and there was us.

• 38:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ragtag girl. So I love it.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  And we were quite a novelty, because no one had ever seen women in a shipyard before. So we used to arrive in the morning, and literally jaws would drop open.

• 39:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, what you're describing to me, I'm a little worried for you at this point, because I'm concerned that the whole thing's going to fall apart in the middle of an ocean.

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Well, no, we had some really amazing people, give us a lot of help. And, I mean, remember that the women I was employing were also professional racing. These were women who loved sailing and loved racing, and were told, no, you can't do that. So they said, well, sod you, then we're going to go and sail with this all-female crew. And we weren't taken seriously by the rest of the fleet, but we were very confident. We were very sure of what we were doing. We'd done probably more ocean miles than any other team. We'd been together longer than any other team. We didn't have as much money, but our battle to get to the start line had made us into a tight-knit, battle-hardened team.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Everyone else was just starting out, so we almost had an advantage.

• 40:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  The start of the Whitbread is a celebration of sail, as thousands of boats. September 2nd, 1989, you line up with the other boats in your class to embark on a race around the world.

• 40:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  Some people didn't think that you'd make it. Like, some of them thought that actually you and your group of women were going to die at sea. What, what was the mood like?

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Oh, God, we, we were completely confident.

• 40:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  Onboard mate, Tracy Edwards had something to prove.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  We never had any doubts.

• 40:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Really?

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, absolutely. We, yeah. If you're a woman, you're told you have to look like this, be like that, you have to use this, use that. Go to the Southern Ocean, you spend 28 days, you don't have to wash, you don't have to dress properly, you don't have to do your hair, it's great. I mean, I finished the 85, 86 Whitbread, and I just went, why are they telling us that's difficult? It's not difficult. This race is the ultimate challenge of man against man, as well as man against the sea. You know, this was a very well-kept secret, this, you know, this meant only men can sail around the world. And yeah, I mean, when we didn't win the first leg, we were gutted. Everyone else was just really pleased that we were alive.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  But you know, the second leg, we started off into the Southern Ocean. From Uruguay in South America to Australia, 6,800 miles, five, nearly six weeks at sea.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  And we were completely confident that we were going to be able to

• 41:41Speaker 03

  win that leg, actually, and we did.

• 41:49Manoush Zomorodi?

  You had described what it was like to be sailing around with a group of men as the only woman. What was it like to be sailing around with a group of all women?

• 41:59Speaker 03

  We were a lot more collaborative as a team. My word was final, my decision was final because someone has to take responsibility. And the buck always stops with the captain. But yeah, no, we were a lot more, had a lot more discussions than I'd ever seen on racing around the world with men. And it worked. I mean, goodness gracious, we've just talked for nine months, pretty much.

• 42:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  I read that also that you would let the girls play music and that there was kind of a festive atmosphere on your boat compared to others.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, music, I felt, was really, really important. You know, you can be professional and race fast and hard and, you know, knuckle down to the work and listen to music, you know, it's not, I know that a lot of the boats banned music and.

• 42:52Manoush Zomorodi?

  Really, they banned them?

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, but if you've got top done playing on the speakers on deck at full blast, highway through the danger zone in the Southern Ocean, it's a huge driver, you know, it picks you up, it's like.

• 43:19Manoush Zomorodi?

  What a welcome, though, awaits Tracy Edwards and her crew. So tell me how the race ended.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Well, the race ended up with us coming second overall and winning two legs.

• 43:30Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yes, it's an historic moment. Second in your division, which is a really big deal.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  The best result for a British boat since 1977, and it hasn't actually been beaten.

• 43:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Maiden's engulfed by a huge spectator fleet.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  It was extraordinary. A platilla of 600 yachts came out to meet us.

• 43:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  As the 12 women complete the task they set out to do nine months ago.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  50,000 people standing on the dock, I mean, literally climbing over each other. It was absolutely amazing.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  30 years later, I understand how we did change things. At the time, I don't think we realized quite the impact that we'd had. But we knew that we'd achieved something which we could be proud of and which we hoped the next all-female crew could build on. But this has done a lot for British yachting, and I hope it's done a lot for women sailors and men sailors and everyone, and I hope everyone feels good about Maiden and what we've done because we feel great.

• 44:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  So you all went your separate ways, is that right?

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, so a lot of the crew got really great jobs on racing boats. People got married, I got married and got divorced very quickly. And then I went into another sailing project. I did the first all-female crew to attempt the non-stop round the world record. Unfortunately, we lost our mast in the Southern Ocean and we didn't break that record. And then, I guess 20 years ago, I put together the first ever mixed gender professional racing team because, you know, the whole point about getting all-female crews wasn't that, you know, the world needs all-female crews. We wanted to prove that we could race with the men because ocean racing is a level playing field.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  So we had six girls and six guys on 125-foot catamaran, fastest boat in the world at the time, and a male skipper and a female skipper. It worked absolutely brilliantly. I mean, it was, it was harmonious, it was competitive, and it really taught me that men and women can work together, you know, if we can work this out, you know, and have this equality, which we're all striving for, then that's when we're at our most effective. We were the most successful record-breaking team for 10 years.

• 45:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Tracy Edwards. By the way, the boat Tracy and her all-female crew sailed in the Whitbread was called The Maiden. In 2015, she launched The Maiden Factor, a nonprofit that raises money for girls' education. To learn more about Tracy and her 1989 racing team, check out the documentary Maiden. You can, of course, see her TED Talk at ted.com.

• 46:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  On the show today, the benefits of play. As adults, of course, we rarely get the chance to run around and explore like we used to do when we were kids. But why shouldn't we, asks photographer Stefan Chao from the TED stage in 2015.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  China's most influential philosopher and thinker, Confucius, or 孔子, once said, "It is better to play than to do nothing." It is interesting how a man who lived 2,500 years ago still rings true to us today. This is Jiahan, and Jiahan is my older daughter. And I know Jiahan sounds like fried rice in Japanese, and I love fried rice very much, but I cannot assure you that's a pure coincidence. When we brought her into the world, we wanted her to explore the things that we know and the things that we think we want her to learn.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  And most importantly, we also wanted her to play and to have fun. Just about a year ago, when Jiahan was 19 months old, we brought her to the playgrounds in Singapore. And immediately, she understood that the playgrounds is a world created for her. The real world out there is a bit too complicated and too big for her. The doorknobs, the staircases are often too wide and too, too far away for a two-year-old. But then, the playgrounds is colorful. The foam mats are padded, and there are slides that you can play around. She immediately understood that this was her world.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  On that day itself, we brought her to six playgrounds. And at the end of the day, she attempted the largest slide of her life. I loved the determination on her face, that singular focus. And most importantly, there was an attitude in her that says, "With this, I can do anything." That experience reminded me of my own experience when I was young with playgrounds. I remember when I was a child, after school, I would still be very restless and I have a lot of energy. And all I would do is to go to the playgrounds, play, kick my friends off the monkey bars,

• 48:50Speaker 03

  and only return home when my knees and elbows are bruised and sweaty. And it also got back to me and wonder, what do I make sense of this? Because since then, I feel very detached from playgrounds. So as a parent and as a photographer, I decided to explore a photo project surrounding playgrounds. And I decided to photograph them from the air.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  This is the same playground that Jiahan went. And this is taken from the sky. And I think there is something different when you see things from a perspective that they are not used to.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  This playground is photographed in Tiong Baru in Singapore, and it is one of the earliest housing estates in Singapore that was built in the 1950s. When you photograph playgrounds from the air, something magical happens. I feel that there is just something spiritual about looking at something from above directly down. Initially, when we did this project, I did not expect to see some of the things we discovered. In the end, I have photographed 100 playgrounds across Singapore. We built a customized drone, put a camera on it, and then we fly up to the sky and I find an appropriate height to photograph the playground.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Very often, when we do the shoots at these playgrounds, we get approached by children, by parents, who are just very curious in what we are doing. I remember we were photographing one playground, and a child came up to me and said, "Wow, you must be photographing my playground, right?" I'm saying, "Yes." "Are you photographing the seahorse?" And I didn't understand him at first, but as we flew up towards the sky, I discovered that indeed, there is a seahorse, and there are two fishes just right in this playground.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  And I get reminded that we need to be looking at the final details in life, on the little tidbits in life that makes life interesting. And more importantly, this project has also helped me to see through the eyes of a child again.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  And sometimes, you even see playgrounds where you even have a small Mickey Mouse just looking at us. And I'm sure the original architect may not have intended for this, but everything just reveals itself when you're up in the air.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  And so, in conclusion, you should just take your child out to play today. Thank you very much.

• 51:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was photographer Stefan Chao. You can see his full TED Talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week. If you want to come say hi to me, I am on Instagram at Manoush Z, M-A-N-O-U-S-H-Z. This episode was produced by Avery Keatley and Katie Monteleone. It was edited by Katie and me. Our TED Radio Hour production staff also includes Rachel Faulkner White, Fiona Giran, James Delahoussaye, Harsha Nahada, and Matthew Cloutier. Our audio engineer was David Greenberg. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Sal Khan, Logan McLeod-Davda, Helen Walters, Roxanne Hylash, and Daniela Balorezzo.

• 52:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

• 52:30Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new idea every day. Learn what's transforming humanity, from balancing AI in your critical thinking to surpassing discoveries about the adolescent brain. Find TED Talks Daily wherever you listen.

• 52:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  This message comes from Middlesex County, New Jersey. Here's why companies are actually making the move to Middlesex County, New Jersey. It's ranked in the top 2% of US counties for talent and knowledge creation and is more innovative than 98% of the nation. The opportunity is real, and it's right here. Visit biz/discovermiddlesex.com to set up a meeting with a business advisor today.