The price of creativity

The words "content creator" may make you roll your eyes. But in part 1 of our series, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler explains how the creator economy is changing work, art and what we value. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted http://plus.npr.org/ted. 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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• 1:11Speaker 03

  So I make my own clothes. I love this dress. I'm building a tiny home for my sister.

• 1:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  But where is all this creativity coming from?

• 1:20Speaker 04

  A word like creativity feels eternal, as natural as air. It's like the base level of all of life.

• 1:28Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is entrepreneur, musician, and writer Yancey Strickler. He's a sort of creativity history buff.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  Well, a common mistake we all make is assuming that the world around us has always been this way. And this is even the case when it comes to ideas that are as bedrock as art and creativity.

• 1:51Manoush Zomorodi?

  But in the 1940s, the US government started taking these fields very seriously.

• 1:57Speaker 04

  And in part from Department of Defense research and funding.

• 2:03Speaker 04

  Post-World War II, people were worried about American society becoming too homogeneous. And the US was worried about facing off against the Soviet Union. And so they needed individuality to contend with this totalitarian society.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  The things about us are made to express our own free spirits and desires.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  So the Defense Department and some social scientists began to study this question of what to do about it. What do we do about this issue of conformity?

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Uncomb the developments of ideas in pace with the emphatic decisions of the American people as to what they want.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  This is when there were more white-collar workers than blue-collar workers for the first time. And they ended up proposing a concept of something called creativity, which they discovered after studying artists and engineers, in particular engineers who pulled all-nighters. And they wanted to understand what made them work, what motivated them.

• 3:02Manoush Zomorodi?

  To do that, they gave them everything from Worschach tests to the Myers-Briggs personality test.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  And they found that these people had this internal drive to make things better. They had, they're just driven in that way. So they began to theorize that what if they could teach people to develop the same skill? They could teach people this notion of creativity. Then creativity would be this democratic form of genius that anyone could access.

• 3:31Manoush Zomorodi?

  From there, the push for creative thinking took off. A 1958 bill promoted science and technology education specifically to get kids to think differently in the name of national defense.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  In the 60s, creative writing began to enter American schools, brainstorming, open-ended thinking sort of practices. And these were intentionally created as a way to teach children how to be creative. Developing creativity was seen as a strategic goal of America. That has continued ever since, to where someone like me, I think of myself as a second-generation creative American, where I went to public schools, where I was taught all of these things. And creativity is very much a deep part of my life.

• 4:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  Much of this history is chronicled in the 2023 book, The Cult of Creativity by Samuel L. Franklin.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  It was very strange to think that there was this origin to creativity, that it had this military industrial purpose that was made to make people more productive and to make things that were more impactful.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  But the more I sat with it, the more I actually think it's beautiful that this is something that originated through a social scientist, that people had the sensitivity to ask and to study how other people stayed connected and loved what they did, to ask what makes those distinct voices distinct, how could we have more of them? How could we teach that in this phrase of a democratic form of genius? And so when I look at the world now, where more kids want to be creators than anything else, where creative expression and culture are at the center of really everything in America, it's like how politics works, how the economy works, how everything works.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  What I see is not some momentary blip, but I see the payoffs of investments that were made 70 years ago. We are on a continued climb in this long process of America embracing creative culture as one of its founding core ideals and one of the things that really makes America distinct.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  And so when I look at the 21st century and I think, what are the dominant forces that are shaping the world around us now? It's the internet, it's AI, and it is also creativity.

• 6:04Speaker 06

  I'm about to hit a million followers on Instagram, which is absolutely nuts. Finishing off my first draft, probably in the next two weeks. Posting my original song, so maybe I can do this instead of going to college.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  Creative problem solving, cultural solutions, design oriented answers, thinking, all of that. This is a long term investment made by the state, made by past generations, that has worked its way through and has now produced just an absolute explosion of output and production.

• 6:35Speaker 07

  I use this 1960s sewing pattern. Welcome back to my monthly breakfast club series.

• 6:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  I don't need either bookcloth or a substitute like leather. I frequently use. But even though Americans are consuming more creative content than ever, you believe the economics are not keeping up. It's not all wild ideas and roses. There's a big problem.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  That's right. You know, right now, we find ourselves more people than ever creating, more demand for content than ever, yet less support systems than ever.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  And there's this very acute pressure that every artist and creative person feels right now of like, I feel like I'm falling behind. I don't even know what to do. You know? And what is this world that seems like it's sort of racing away from me?

• 7:24Manoush Zomorodi?

  In an era when anyone with a phone can call themselves a creator, and half of all young people say they hope to become an influencer, how are they turning all this output into a paycheck? And what does all this commoditized creativity mean for art, money, and culture? Well, over the next two episodes, we're digging in. First, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler explains why capitalism needs to transition to accommodate this new marketplace. And then next week, Gen Z linguist and TikTok creator Adam Alexic shows us how algorithms are reshaping language, attention, and what we value. Together, they'll help us understand the creator economy.

• 8:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  Let's get back to Yancey. In the early 2000s, he was living in New York, working as a music critic and running a tiny record label when he met a guy named Perry Chen.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Like me, he was a creative person, always trying to get projects off the ground. And he had wanted to throw a concert but didn't have the money to do it and thought, what if he could just propose the idea for the concert online? People could pre-purchase tickets and the show would only happen if it sold out. And if there wasn't enough interest, no big deal. He wouldn't be out the money and the people together could decide. And this idea really resonated with me because at the time, as a creative person, to get support for your projects, you had to go pitch like a proper company of some kind, or some board of approval that you needed. There wasn't that direct path where

• 9:03Speaker 04

  you could just go out into the world with your own ideas. And the idea of letting us as fans have a voice in what we wanted to see, and the idea that we as artists and creative people wouldn't need to ask for one person's permission, but instead convince people of the merit of our vision, that just seemed way more fun and more interesting.

• 9:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  It ended up taking them, plus a third co-founder, years to create a platform that could let people crowdfund their projects. They called their site Kickstarter.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  In 2009, Kickstarter went live, and the very first week, a project was successfully funded. And it wasn't an overnight success, but amazingly for us, from the moment the site was there, people got it. People understood what it was there for. They saw it as a type of a game. It had an energy. Like, everything we could have dreamed really happened. And for creative people, it just dramatically opened the doors to where no longer were we all lining up in front of these singular gatekeepers, but instead, we really had the freedom to go out the way we wanted, with our own projects and ideas. And it just opened

• 10:18Speaker 04

  the floodgates to now, you know, a much bigger world that we call the creator economy and a whole bunch of other stuff. That project was really one of the first that showed what the internet could do, that really put a lot of trust and a lot of power in the hands of individuals versus the institutions, and exceeded all of our expectations, but really came from Our own experiences as creative people ourselves.

• 10:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  Musicians got their albums funded by groups of friends. Authors crowdfunded their new novels. Even huge companies like Peloton and Allbirds got their start on Kickstarter.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  At this point, I think it's $9 billion or something like that that's changed hands through the platform.

• 11:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  In 2017, Yancey stepped down as CEO.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  And I returned to being a full-time writer, author. I wrote a book and was leading a community. And was doing everything I thought I wanted and had thousands of people gathered around ideas I was really passionate about.

• 11:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  But he struggled to figure out how to make this group of creative people who were making books and all kinds of other creative products financially viable. He didn't want to start a nonprofit or another big company.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  I didn't want to be at the top of a pyramid. I wanted to be a part of something with other people. And I really struggled to see how to do that. How do I, as a creative person, have peers? You know, do I have to start a band? Is it like a collective? But a collective seems scary. Collective seems like I'm supposed to give up my identity. Like, I don't want to do that. And so I ended up thinking about the model of an indie record label where, you know, a way a label can sort of represent a scene or a sound or a place. And it can bring a lot of different people together around them. And what's cool about a label is like by being a part of a label, you're not giving up your individual voice, but you are just benefiting by being a part of something larger than you.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  So I started thinking, could you reimagine something like that, not around music, but around any sort of creative form, where people who had a common purpose or common taste, people who wanted mutual support, they can have a structure that let them do that and let them easily share money, share audiences, and just not be trapped on their own.

• 12:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  In a minute, more about the answer that Yancey came up with and how he thinks it could be the way to give creative people the power and money they deserve.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  In a world where 48% of Americans report having a personal creative practice, in a world where art and culture has gone from sideline to, like, main stage, it just creates a very different set of conditions.

• 13:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  Today on the show, part one of the creator economy. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to NPR's TED Radio Hour. We'll be right back.

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• 14:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi. On the show today, The Creator Economy with writer and entrepreneur Yancey Strickler.

• 14:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  So earlier, Yancy explained the origins of how we think of creativity today, and why more and more people are trying to turn their creative pursuits into a source of income.

• 14:57Speaker 11

  I'm creating a super cool piece of like brutalist-inspired wall art.

• 15:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  From artists and musicians.

• 15:02Speaker 07

  I wrote a song, and I'm posting it.

• 15:05Manoush Zomorodi?

  To chefs.

• 15:06Speaker 07

  Here's everything I made for an eight-person birthday.

• 15:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  To fashion influencers. Let me teach you how to style what you already have.

• 15:11Speaker 12

  At the beginning of every week.

• 15:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  Social media has turned creative expression into a whole new industry.

• 15:18Speaker 13

  Here's how I made about $7,000 going live on TikTok for one month.

• 15:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  We talked to one content creator named Shivani Shah. She's a professional dancer who started posting videos during the pandemic.

• 15:29Speaker 13

  I never really imagined it kind of from the lens of, oh, I'm creating content. It was just, oh, I'm doing this thing that, you know, I'm stuck at home in COVID. I'm bored. I'm just gonna do this thing and post it.

• 15:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  But her videos caught people's attention, so she started collaborating with other dancers online.

• 15:49Speaker 13

  It was just crazy because I was like, wow, all these people like really love what I'm doing and want to do it, too.

• 15:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  And Shivani started to make money from the platforms and advertising. She built a brand with another dancer. They posted routines together, had in-person classes, even went on tour.

• 16:07Speaker 13

  Hi, everyone. We are Dacey Fuse. I'm Shivani, and this is Ishani. And we both started shuffling in the summer.

• 16:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  Now, to keep the money coming in, Shivani has to keep posting and posting.

• 16:19Speaker 13

  Yeah, I mean, when you start pursuing your creative hobby full-time, sometimes you have to do work that you're not that excited by just to get like the paycheck from it. And other times, the work you really want to pour into that may require more time and creativity isn't the work that's also paying you.

• 16:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Today, Shivani goes back and forth between full-time content creation and working in the corporate world so that she can have health insurance. It's a tenuous mix because it's not easy out there. As of 2023, only 4% of content creators made more than $100,000 per year, according to Goldman Sachs. Most of those earnings come from brand deals or pitching products. Other revenue comes from subscriptions or donations. But the creator economy is projected to grow to a $480 billion industry in the next few years. And Nancy Strickler believes it should just be easier for more people to take part in it.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  The act of people going online, expressing their talent, their hobby, their passion, doing so in a way for which they are directly paid by their audience, or in a TikTok era, that they're paid by a brand to endorse a product, or maybe they have a product they're selling in the Instagram or TikTok stores, a part of what they do, that that overall space, that direct connection between a personality and an audience, is going to be a hugely significant area of the economy.

• 17:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  But that doesn't mean that every person who considers themselves an artist or a creator should be paid for their work, does it?

• 18:05Speaker 04

  I mean, if they, if someone aspires to be, I don't, I don't take that away from them. In our survey data, we find that about half of people have some sort of legal formation. So to me, that says half of these 3,000-plus people take it at least, you know, fairly seriously. Serious enough that they were willing to spend, you know, 500 bucks to do some paperwork, some arduous paperwork about it. So say, half of people are doing that. And say, the other half, yeah, maybe half would love that opportunity, maybe the other half, they don't need it. It's more about singing at church, or writing their newsletter, and it's just for fun. It's just for fun. But, you know, for the kids coming

• 18:44Speaker 04

  up, for the however many, you know, young people who, who want to be creators, or the fact that New York City's art schools have like, the highest application rates ever this past year, like, there's more energy going into this place. And so, I think there is an expectation, a hope that it will bring Probably greater economic benefits than is realistic. But in the future, I think that that might actually be the case.

• 19:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  But I guess what's different now is that we see it as a potential profession, whereas we used to call that hobbies, right? Like, is that what's changing in terms of this idea that like, I love doing this and guess what? Maybe I can get paid for it, too.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  Absolutely. You know, the internet has made it so that we can turn our side hustles into forms of income. We can turn them into jobs. The challenge is that it's like the art, the act of being an artist in a world like this is not as simple as it used to be, you know, because now you have many jobs. You're the artist, you're the marketer, you're the community manager, you're the order fulfiller, you know, you're all of these things because we're ultimately running these small businesses around our hobbies. And this is where you see a lot of stats about burnout being something that's quite common, even for people who are very successful at this, because it is very much a grind.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  It's an, it's an always on grind. And there's not a lot of peer relationship that's a part of it. And, you know, I, I, I'm the optimist who believes that these conditions can change. I believe that what's happening now is not a fad. It's not going away. That creative work is undervalued in our eyes. It's more valuable than people realize. And that a world in which creative people are reliant on these other players to support ourselves, like we're, we're always, we're always going to be vulnerable. And so we really need a system of our own.

• 20:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  And that brings us to Yancey's big idea. He's working on creating a new legal structure to offer artists protection and stability. He calls it an artist corporation or A Corp.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. And an artist corporation or an A Corp is a proposal for a new legal type, a new corporate type that would be established through a new law, law established at the state level. And the goal of an artist corporation would be to make a entity. That represents creative businesses.

• 21:19Manoush Zomorodi?

  Right now, most of those businesses opt to be either an LLC or S corp.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  LLC is the most basic legal structure. It's a legal shield over the project, gives you some tax benefits. It doesn't have upside, doesn't have easy ownership sharing exactly, but it's sort of the base level most people use. It's also not the friendliest to use. But what an A corp does, A corp is designed from the ground up for artists and creative people. So to qualify for an A corp, you have to be making a creative output of some type. The project must be at least 51% owned and controlled by artists and creators, not outside investors, so you're pre-qualifying in. And as an A, you can raise money from both for-profit sources as well as receive nonprofit sources of funds.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  But overall, we're trying to create a structure that validates creative work and that lets creative people participate in capitalism, have entities, be a real player, the way that other economic players are in our culture today. And we think the A corp does that. The A corp just might be the door that opens up a new path to prosperity for creative people.

• 22:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  Here's Yancey Strickler on the TED stage.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  You could think of an A corp as like a company but built for how creative people work. And we can imagine a band starts and right from the beginning, they have an A corp. So not just five individuals, they're people who collectively own an organization that has the power to own their intellectual property, their gear, their business. As they start to get paid, that money can automatically flow to each of the members according to preset amounts. And they could even set aside money to be saved for future projects in a treasury or pooling together with other artist corporations to get better healthcare or other benefits. As an artist corporation, they would also be able to receive both commercial revenue as well as nonprofit sources of funding. And if a label or a bigger commercial entity came along, rather than just selling the rights to their intellectual property,

• 23:23Speaker 04

  which has been customary until now, as an artist corporation, they can issue shares. So instead, that entity would make an investment in the artist corporation, allowing it to be valued more highly and everyone to benefit if things went well.

• 23:38Manoush Zomorodi?

  The music industry is a particularly interesting example because it used to be the case that a popular band could make a lot of money from selling records. But then, of course, the internet came along and now with streaming platforms, it is much harder for artists to make as much money, any money. So the old system no longer works. But we haven't figured out a new one?

• 24:01Speaker 04

  We're definitely in the bardo. You know, we, there is a, a system that drove the 20th century of creative production that is still in power because it holds the ownership rights to all of that work. But definitely, it's, it's, it's tools are less relevant today than, than they've been in the past. You know, what's interesting is that, say, in music, music is a great case. If a band gets signed traditionally, you know, they, they're given a standard record deal, which in all likelihood leaves the label owning the publishing and masters of their work. You know, they get some cut of it, they get a royalty.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  They start some LLC with advittance from their manager, and maybe that's set up by someone else. And they end up not owning their actual work. They're getting paid out after all these deductions that they don't understand. And they're, they're a part of a system where they have no agency whatsoever. And it's wild, like, for the capital sources of culture today, for labels and, you know, studios, these bigger entities, artists are essentially service providers who create assets that these larger entities acquire and capitalize on.

• 25:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  Hmm.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  We're in a weird spot in the industry where it's capitalism for me, but not for thee, not for the artist.

• 25:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  So how would it work if, if, if a band created an A corp? How would the money get back to them, should they have some success?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Well, so as, as an A corp, they could pre-register to say, okay, listen, our, our A owns the IP of music that we create. And so if a label wants to work with us, great. Well, they can negotiate with us either an investment for which they get the right to distribute this work. Or, you know, right now, labels are dealing with individual artists who know that this is their only chance to make it, and they're probably going to sign anything in front of them. But if you look at the way these same entities, these corporations, interact with peer corporations, what do they do? They make joint ventures. You know, they make things where both parties share in the upside together. So in a world where the band has an A corp,

• 26:21Speaker 04

  I think their record would be like a joint venture co-owned by the band and the label, at which they are both putting in some money or, you know, labor to make it happen, and which they both own in the upside. It's not one where only the corporate entity, the larger corporate entity owns the upside, and the artist just gets, basically, the excess returns. But instead, it's one of like real partnership and real ownership.

• 26:51Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, it's funny to me. I have talked to so many people who are so excited to start their own company because they, you know, want to get their work out into the world, whether that's art, or writing, or whatever it is. And then you're like, yeah, but then you also have to deal with accounting and paying your taxes and setting up the structures and all of those things that are not so fun. But are you finding that creative people are getting excited about this new tax structure?

• 27:23Speaker 04

  They are. They are. And this is being done hand in hand with artists. You know, I have amazing artist advisors, and there's a lot of surveys and data from artists that are informing what we're doing.

• 27:37Speaker 11

  Hello, my name is Jackson Cooper, and I live in Seattle, Washington.

• 27:41Speaker 12

  My name is Liz Alvarado, and I live in Fort Collins, Colorado. We reached out to some of the artists who are excited about Yancey's plan for the A corp.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  I'm a photographer. I'm a poet.

• 27:52Speaker 14

  I'm a model, performer, singer, songwriter, and a musician.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  I do a lot of collage.

• 27:58Speaker 15

  I am an illustrator and a writer. Earlier this year, I left my tech design job to run my own multidisciplinary creative practice.

• 28:07Speaker 15

  I will say that one of the biggest challenges so far has been battling people's preconceptions of design and what design is worth.

• 28:16Speaker 14

  The biggest struggle is stability. And the admin takes up so much time that it feels like I'm running five different businesses by myself.

• 28:25Speaker 12

  Pitching, funding, managing rights. We are often trying to please whoever is responsible for giving us funding.

• 28:32Speaker 11

  You are at the mercy of a system that is only expecting you to produce, produce, produce.

• 28:39Speaker 16

  It's not a lack of talent, that there aren't more successful working artists. It's a systemic issue.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  One thing I really stood out, we asked, what are your most desired features? And the things people most want. Low cost of formation, simpler maintenance, clear ownership of IP, and the ability to share profits with peers easily.

• 29:02Speaker 12

  That would mean I could build equity in my projects instead of just selling them off. And it would make a creative life feel much more sustainable in the long run. I think that an A Corp could help artists spend more of their time creating and less time struggling against the systems that were never really set up for us.

• 29:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Jackson Cooper, Elizabeth Alvarado, Chris Lorenson, Jade Fox, Craig Cloutier, Alina Braithwaite, Sabrina Liu, Michelle Dong, Maddy Bovard, and Hannah Celeste. So Yancey's A Corp idea isn't just a vision. He's hoping to make it a reality, starting in Colorado.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  Where we have real progress. I have a sponsor, a senator, state senator, who is sponsoring this bill. There is a bill underway that's being written. And it's quite exciting to really try to operate at this level and to try to make an impact at the level of a public good that if this is successful, it creates a foundation for every artist from here on out. I think to have a potentially dramatically different outcome than anyone before.

• 30:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  Let's talk about those who see creator as a viable career opportunity. How would this change the way they become?

• 30:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  I guess, adults who can pay their bills and have health insurance. What, how do you picture it?

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think, you know, right now, if you are, let's say you're someone who makes videos on TikTok, or you, you post songs, or whatever, you do, you do something.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  My assumption is that you are just largely posting and going on your own for a while, and you probably don't have any sort of legal structure. Now, what's happening now for TikTokers who do well is they have investors reaching out to them. What a lot of those deals are right now are 360 deals. These are basically deals that sign all rights of anything you might make. And so they are overly restrictive.

• 31:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  Can you give me an example? What does that look like when you get a 360 deal?

• 31:25Speaker 04

  So it would say, it would say to you, okay, great. You know, X person, you're a, this makeup artist. You know, great, we, we believe in your channel. We want to help you scale up. We're going to put in, you know, $100,000. And, and now we own, you know, 25% of everything you make from here on.

• 31:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  I see.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Versus saying, in the way the A Corp is structured, you're asked to say, what IP, what work lives within this structure? So in that world, that makeup artist could more easily say, hey, this is a, this is a deal involving my podcast, involving these things. It doesn't involve these other things. This is the structure that puts me in control.

• 32:11Manoush Zomorodi?

  It can sound like a lot of legalese, but put simply, the A Corp business structure would let creators own their content, get investors, and officially value creativity as capital.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Rather than them being just an individual personality, they would be something that might have more, more heft, more market power to it.

• 32:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  When we come back, how all this content creation is being affected by the age of AI. On the show today, the creator economy with entrepreneur Nancy Strickler. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Back in a minute.

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• 34:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, we are talking about the creator economy with entrepreneur Yancey Strickler. So earlier, Yancey called himself a second-generation creative, someone who grew up in 20th century America where individualism and creativity was nurtured. But not everyone agrees that that was the case.

• 34:48Speaker 19

  So I want to talk about education, and I want to talk about creativity.

• 34:51Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is education advisor Sir Ken Robinson. In 2006, he gave what has ended up being one of the most-watched TED Talks ever. It's called Do Schools Kill Creativity?

• 35:05Speaker 19

  My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy. And we should treat it with the same status.

• 35:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  He started off by making the point that everyone is creative when they're very young, and shared a story that I have heard repeated by many different people over the past 20 years. Maybe you have too. It's about a little girl in art class.

• 35:28Speaker 19

  She was six and she was at the back drawing and the teacher said, this little girl hardly ever paid attention. And in this drawing lesson, she did. And the teacher was fascinated. She went over to her and she said, what are you drawing? And the girl said, I'm drawing a picture of God. And the teacher said, but nobody knows what God looks like. And the girl said, they will in a minute.

• 35:48Manoush Zomorodi?

  For Robinson, being creative was the willingness to take risks, to immerse yourself in your imagination and make something that doesn't yet have a template. Something he felt that most adults ended up losing.

• 36:03Speaker 19

  Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go.

• 36:09Speaker 19

  Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is if you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. If you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

• 36:31Manoush Zomorodi?

  Sir Ken died in 2020, just a few years before ChatGPT and other large language models became ubiquitous. And today, young people might wonder, why risk looking silly or even taking the time to draw a picture or write a poem when the algorithm can do it so much faster, maybe better? Sir Ken's final thoughts in his talk sound prescient.

• 36:58Speaker 19

  Our task is to educate their whole being so they can face this future. By the way, we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it.

• 37:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  Because creativity is at an inflection point. There are those who believe it's being crushed by AI, which turns everything into slop. Others who feel that if a computer can compose a symphony or design a logo in seconds, then maybe originality no longer defines creativity. And still others who believe AI will give creativity a boost.

• 37:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  But with or without AI, artist and entrepreneur Yancey Strickler believes we are entering humanity's most creative period yet.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  I think ultimately, we're on a course of this being seen as the creative century, which is going to be the period of time in which humans approached problems and approached opportunities from this creative mindset of seeking the culturally resonant solution, seeking the aesthetically beautiful or pleasing answer, bringing design principles and creative principles to apply in culture and in society and in business and economics. And the way that creative thinking has grown in our culture in a very explicit way is just something

• 38:24Speaker 04

  that is going to embed itself more deeply around all of society. In a world where technology and AI, all these things makes a lot of what is manufacturing and creation to be input-output, I think it's personality and it's relationship with audience that's going to distinguish what stands out from what doesn't.

• 38:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  Are you talking about this disillusionment in a lot of young people with late capitalism, this idea of the individual and this yearning to come together in real life, to have a "community" of people?

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I think that culturally, no one believes in social media, I think, in a real way. We all know all social media is an ad. Everyone's doing it because they have to. And so as creative people, there's a lot of pessimism at the moment. There's pessimism about the world, there's pessimism about AI, there's pessimism about platforms.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  I think that it's all true, but we also just have such amazing opportunities as creative people. There's a lot more of us than there used to be. It's more competitive. Those are things that we're having to deal with. But I feel like there is a classical era of culture production that has closed. And I think probably that dividing line is AI. There's probably some dividing line where like classical culture production involves the period of time which we can say with certainty, these things were largely made by human hands and human minds.

• 40:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  That's classical, huh?

• 40:05Speaker 04

  That's classical. And then the neo-modern will be what we're in now.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  This perpetual now, this confusing, confusing amalgamation of things that, you know, initially I felt judgmental about, being kind of boomer of me. But in talking to like, the teenage TikTokers, you know, I understand that they view these things as tools. And that, you know, it's a, it's just something that's there for them. And, and that, you know, people imposing their 20th century viewpoint of what, you know, what truth and beauty is, is like probably not going to make it or win in this moment of time. But so I, I really think that the conditions of our escape are, are here, the tools are here.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  Like I, I just continue to have faith in, in the energy of the internet. And, and if I look at what's happening in dark forests and group chats and these spaces, if I look at what people are able to achieve with light coordination and very little resources,

• 41:16Speaker 04

  it just makes me continue to be bullish on what internet-powered people can do.

• 41:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  Can we talk more about AI? Is, I guess I think, I think of it in two ways. One is that IP or intellectual property, that's going to be more difficult to figure out what that even is in the era of AI. And then I guess the other question is, are more people going to be turning to creative professions or trying to make money off their hobbies simply because AI will allegedly take some of the, that will have more time, there'll be less normal nine to five jobs?

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I think the, I think that using AI because we have more time, I think that's real. And, you know, I mean, definitely, definitely.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  AI is your production assistant, you know, AI is trying to fill those gaps of all the jobs that you as an artist have taken on in this modern world. I mean, certainly, people are going to try at that. I kind of think a world of AIs, you know, probably we'll all get to have a more childlike experience with creative things. You know, I think us interacting with, say, AI augmented creative tools is going to let us feel like we're good at anything. It just might be that no one else cares.

• 42:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  I guess I'm wondering, you know, can we set expectations? There's, there's a worry that I have that we picture this potentially, let's stay away from dystopia for a second, go towards utopia, which is like, AI makes things incredibly accessible. I can finally put out the album that I want to put out, but because I can't compose music, but with AI, I can. Do you, do you worry that there are people who are like, who maybe it's wishful thinking that they can pay their bills by becoming an artist or a creator? That when everyone is creator, a creator, you know, what even is art? What, where, I mean, this

• 43:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  gets more philosophical, but you know, this idea that everyone thinks what I'm making is amazing and someone should pay me for it. There's something very, um, well, childlike, yes, but also, um, I'm just worried that people think they don't have to work anymore, Nancy.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  How boomer of you.

• 43:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  I know.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  How, I think just because AI makes it easier doesn't mean the audience is going to care. And the, the audience still has a lot of power. And, I mean, there's, there's, there's a lot of the AI creative demonstrations I see is like art for non-artists to me. It's like, why, why would I do that? Like, that's the fun part. You're taking away the fun part. And I don't think it's going to replace.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  What people choose to actively consume, with the exception of like, you know, things that become memes or just hits a lottery of the right moment in time.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  So I don't, I don't really worry about that. But I do have, you know, as a writer, for example, I do feel gatekeeper-y when I see, you know, AI books, for example, like, you know, and, and I, I have a reaction of I like, I want that to be branded that that's AI and that mine is not. And, you know, I, I feel something about that.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  And I think that maybe just what I, what I have to believe is that, again, the, the audience, the, the audience will help determine the relative value of those things. But I also probably have to accept that someone 30 years younger than me is going to have a very different, very different, you know, way to come at this.

• 45:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah, I mean, because as, I'm not a boomer. I'm a Gen Xer and part of me wants to maintain that sort of, don't sell out, don't be, you know, punk rock thing, which is, what if you just make art because you like making it? Why do we have to commoditize everything? Like, the idea of people,

• 45:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  you know, selling subscriptions so that you can be voyeur on their life. Yes, I know I sound old by saying like, I think that's kind of gross, but maybe that is just me being of my generation.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I, I see both, I see both sides for sure. I, I am, I am also Gen X and it knows. I mean, I hear people and honestly, the, this, the, the worries people share are worries I share of like, you know, I don't know if we want more money coming into our space. I don't know what it's going to do. I feel anxious about those things. But to me, an even bigger challenge is the fact that there is not enough support coming in now. And that I believe that people aren't capturing the value of what they do. And actually, our work is being exploited in a way that doesn't actually reflect the value we create. And that, that is something that's changeable. And I think changing that will materially change the conditions

• 46:36Speaker 04

  and the lives of future generations of creative people.

• 46:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  And what about for you? I don't think you're even 50 yet, right? But you've ended up spending a lot of your adult life experimenting with ways to align money with creativity. Do you think you'll keep doing that?

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I'm 46 years old. I've been working in the creative fields my whole life. I mean, I grew up the son of a musician. And my dad was a country musician who didn't make it, you know, the way he dreamed. And instead, he had day jobs. When I was growing up, he was a traveling waterbed salesman who played music on the weekends. And to me, like, the idea that a creative life is a mix of income sources and you do it out of love and it's, you know, that was always, it was always so apparent to me. And that's also how my life has been lived. And, and, you know, what, what I can see is that there's more of us, there's more and

• 47:41Speaker 04

  more of us living our lives that way. And actually, the opportunity, I think, is significant. And in that, that experience of 48% of Americans who have a creative practice, who some are trying to make money out of it, some are, it's a hobby, you know, that there's a real benefit to taking that seriously.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  To me, all narratives are retrospective. Moving forward through life, I haven't known what I'm doing. I'm just doing what is interesting, what I feel called to, what I can't help but to do. And, and only now, after being a music journalist, doing Kickstarter, starting a creative independent, doing metal label, doing artist corporations, I've also run a small press right now that I love doing. You know, my, my, my life is about lifting up the potential of creative people. My entire life is dedicated to that. And, and from childhood, that has been my life. You know, I didn't know. I didn't know that's what it would always be, but it's what it's always been.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  And, and I just have like a unbelievable hunger for that and such joy. And for me to be able to like...

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Talk, support an artist and putting out a work. Few things better for me to discover something that I love. I mean, that's as good as it gets. Like, this is, this is just who I am and who I will always be. And I take that with an extreme amount of responsibility and love being able to support my people.

• 49:22Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Yancey Strickler. He's an entrepreneur, musician, writer, and the co-founder of Kickstarter. You can see his full talk at ted.com.

• 49:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Thank you so much for listening to part one of our two-part series on the creator economy. Next week, linguist and viral content creator Adam Alexic takes us inside social media trends and explains how they're changing culture and how we talk to each other.

• 49:53Speaker 20

  I don't want to be shalant all the time. There's a time and a place to be shalant and then there's a time to be nonchalant.

• 49:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah, but shalant is not its own word. What?

• 49:59Speaker 20

  But it is. It is now. It's a slang word that was popularized through, like, social media.

• 50:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  Meaning?

• 50:05Speaker 20

  Meaning the opposite of nonchalant, meaning you are overt about something.

• 50:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  Like jazz?

• 50:08Speaker 20

  You are, yeah, you are excited about something. I'm shalant about language, you know?

• 50:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  And Adam even teaches us what it takes to go viral.

• 50:16Speaker 20

  Wait, so we're trying to make a viral video right now?

• 50:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yes, we're gonna make a viral video, you and me. It's a fun one. You don't want to miss it. If you liked this episode and enjoyed it, or you have some feedback, do email us. We are at [email protected]. We read every message and we love hearing from you. For example, we got this lovely voice message from a listener about our recent episode, "The Art of Choosing What to Do." Danielle Eve sent us her thoughts about being intentional with how she spends her time.

• 50:51Speaker 21

  I've never actually sent a voice comment to radio hosts, but I feel like this conversation about time and...

• 51:03Speaker 21

  How we are spending our time and finding the meaningfulness of life is so important. And I think I shared the episode 10 or 12 times in the, you know, during the podcast. And so I just wanted to say, thanks for making it. It was really great. And I was really excited to share it because it felt like it combined a whole bunch of resources that I hadn't thought of yet. So, thank you so much.

• 51:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  This episode was produced by Hershna Hada and Katie Monteleone and edited by Sana Sheshkampur and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Delahoussie, Rachel Faulkner White, Matthew Cloutier, Fiona Guerin, and Phoebe Lett. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxane Hylash, and Daniela Bella Rezo. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

• 52:12Speaker 08

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