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Episode Transcript

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome to the FoST podcast. Artists and storytellers have always known that creativity is good for the soul. Now, more and more research is showing that it's also good for our overall health. Scientists in the field of neuroaesthetics have gathered evidence that great art and stories not only help us expand our minds, but literally change our brains in a way that helps us lead fuller, more enriched lives.

This evidence calls for a culture shift for our society to stop viewing art as a luxury and recognize it as something that human beings require to thrive. Two experts at the forefront of this shift are today's guests Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. Susan is the founder and director of the International Arts and Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Ivy is the VP of Hardware Design at Google, where she leads a team that has won over 225 design awards. She's also an internationally recognized jewelry designer with work in the permanent collections of museums including the Smithsonian and the V&A in London. I'm excited to speak with Susan and Ivy today about their new book, Your Brain on Art, how creativity helps our brains grow, and how new technologies can help usher in the next age of human flourishing. Please join me in welcoming Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen.

Susan, Ivy, welcome to the Future of Storytelling Podcast. Thanks for being here.

Ivy Ross:

Oh, we're thrilled to be here.

Susan Magsamen:

Thanks for having us.

Charlie Melcher:

Congratulations on your new book, Your Brain on Art. I've so enjoyed reading it. It's exciting. I can't wait for everyone to read it.

Ivy Ross:

Nor can we. Yeah, it was a labor of love, and so it's really great when it gets birthed into the world.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, one of the things that just struck me as so optimistic and hopeful is this idea that your brain can just continue to grow and change throughout your entire life, right? I think I, as a kid, thought that you were born with a certain number of brain cells and they just start dying off until you're dead. And I guess that's not true.

Susan Magsamen:

When neuroplasticity was really understood not that long ago, within the last 50 years, and we started to understand that our brains continue to grow and change. And even though I think it's a miraculous process of how our brains grow, and it makes so much sense, we bring the world in through our senses. And while we've all learned as kids that we have five senses, sound, vision, touch, smell, and taste, it turns out that we probably have more than 50 senses that were just starting to learn about. And as we bring the world in through our senses, these neurotransmitters and hormones induce neuroplasticity, and we sculpt these neural connections at a synaptic level, and there's a hundred billion neurons that we're born with, but there's quadrillions of synapses and trillions of neural pathways that are created, and so they change and grow and sculpt throughout our lives. And I think what Ivy and I think is super cool is that it all happens through novelty, surprise, curiosity, this sense of wonder. And I don't think life can get much better than that.

Ivy Ross:

And now I totally understand that phrase, growth mindset versus fixed because it really is that your mind can either grow or stay fixed. And what I love about what I learned through doing this with Susan is not only does your brain constantly change and connections are made through these salient experiences, but your brain also prunes the old ones. So when it runs out of room, it prunes, like in a garden, the ones it no longer needs. So that is a great way to understand that we can become new people because we each have our own unique brain. So if we add enough new data, we can prune the old stuff to make room and really be a different brain.

Charlie Melcher:

And I just love the premise of the book, which is that you've shared how art can be this vehicle for that kind of growth and change. Tell us a little bit about how it is that art is so good at helping us to evolve and change our brains.

Susan Magsamen:

This whole idea around art and aesthetic experiences, we've grown to think of art as something that's pretty precious and a luxury and something that you have to really purchase. But in fact, art is what we do all the time. And if you talk to indigenous cultures, which we did in the book, art is something that you live and breathe and do. It's not another thing that you do when you have leisure time. And so I think we start there in thinking about what does it mean to art? And art is at its core about self-expression and being both a maker and a beholder.

So when you really get at the root of humanity and the fact that we're wired to bring the world in through our senses, we're wired to have these incredibly salient experiences. And it turns out that singing, dancing, storytelling, making, using clay, using all these different tools with our hands that we know about, and now the technology that's bringing in the digital arts, you start to look at, well, it's not really this high art, but it's things like doodling and humming and singing and telling stories to your kids at bedtime and listening to the stories of the elders and really understanding how we learn is through these experiences that are so highly aesthetic.

Ivy Ross:

Yeah, it's why the indigenous people didn't even have a word for art because it was just life. It was their life and it was their culture. And there's a great quote we have in the book from Jill Bolte Taylor that says, "We think we're thinking beings that feel, but we're actually feeling beings that think." I do think we, in our advanced format here, we walk around in our head thinking that the intellect is there. That's important. But we've actually been designed to be feeling beings first, which is all those things we take in through our senses. Susan and I threw an exhibition at Salone in Milan that Google sponsor, did an experiment really the first time we proved this idea of neuroaesthetics to the public, which is we had three different rooms, three different living room settings with different texture, smell, colors, shape, lighting, and then we did an algorithm on a band that people wore and spent five minutes in each of these different rooms with all of these different aesthetic inputs.

And at the end, we downloaded the data from the band because the idea was to show, and sure enough to prove that that what you think isn't always what you feel. And so for example, we had done the algorithm based on taking in biometrics on your physiology in which space, and again, that environment was a number of neuroaesthetic elements, was your body least stressed or most at ease? And that did not necessarily match up to the room at the end when we said, "Well, which room did you like the best?" And like could be a matter of, "Oh, this room reminds me of something I saw in a magazine." But your body may not be liking it. And so there were so many wonderful ahas, which is like, "Oh my God, my body is taking things in all the time." And we don't realize that we are embodied beings and that our body is feeling all the time and we have to feed it. We have to feed it these sensorial experiences, which the arts do.

Charlie Melcher:

What's exciting about the science and stories that you tell in your book is to remind us that actually we all have that ability to express ourselves creatively, that it is incredibly healthy, natural, organic to us as a species. These new technologies that are coming online now, things like virtual reality and augmented reality and sensors and haptics and AI, they're enabling kinds of storytelling that's going to let us become re-embodied, will let us interact with our experiences, let us have some real agency and the ability to improvise. And as opposed to mass media, which was fixed, unidirectional, and passively consumed, this is exciting. We're going towards something that's more naturally us.

Ivy Ross:

It's going to be up to our imagination. And I'm hoping that what happens with technology, it propels us to even be more imaginative. Because when you think about what it will enable us to do, it will take certain things off our hands because it will do it for us, but we will be forced to be more imaginative to then lead the technology to a new place. I'm not into technology that takes our humanity away from us. It's technology that amplifies our humanity. And I think this area of creativity and the arts of the future where we're going to be using technology to be able to bring color to sound and do all kinds of extraordinary things, it's really open to our possibilities now.

Charlie Melcher:

Susan, you mentioned this idea that there are maybe 50 senses, right? That right now we only think of the sensory palette is five, but in fact, there are so many more. And I wonder if part of what's going to be happening is we're going to become more in touch with a fuller array of sensorial information and experience, both as individuals so we can feel things and experience things in a more rich way, but also maybe as artists and storytellers. We could help people, if we had a broader color palette, if you will, of ways to make people feel things, that would be amazing, just amazing.

Susan Magsamen:

I think that the role of technology married to the arts and science is democratizing also. And so it really is something that is accessible to everyone. There's an access that is opening up in so many ways, but the world is moving towards what we call in the book a hybrid experience, where you're going to be in the real world and in the virtual world. And sometimes that space between, that liminal space between, is going to seem very, very shallow. And that's super interesting.

So what you learn in these immersive spaces can transfer into your real world. And I'll give you a really great example of that where being able to explore some of these different emotional experiences or feelings or new senses that may be around socialization, working with autistic kids and helping them to be able to understand more about emotion by using some of these virtual cues in an immersive space than be able to bring that into the real world to be able to use it there. And I think the research is going to be catching up with the artists as it always has. Artists have always been there first. Storytellers and designers have always taken the pulse of what's happening in society. And then research comes behind and says, "This is what's happening and this is why it's happening. And how do you catapult it?"

Charlie Melcher:

You talk about this idea of human flourishing in the book and the elements that go into that kind of human flourishing or having that type of life. Can you describe a little bit for us what do you mean by flourishing?

Susan Magsamen:

Well, I think we've been optimizing for productivity and in some ways coping with the world, managing twists and turns, and that's great. Showing up is great, but I think we all want to amplify our potential. We want to feel most alive. We want to flourish. We want to thrive. These elated states of humanity are also part of what it means to be human. And a lot of us don't do that for a lot of reasons. And so we wanted to have a chapter that wasn't about fixing us, but about actually helping us grow. And that's what flourishing is about.

And there's a really beautiful poem in the beginning by the artist IN-Q, it's called Goldfish. And what he talks about, and I'm just going to read the first couple of lines because I think this hits it, "Defining myself is like confining myself, so I undefined myself to find myself." And it's true. Neuroscience is actually proving that, that spaces really matter. Enriched environments change brain structure for better or worse. And so he really puts it right out there. We can grow as big as we want. And what does it take to do that? So we identified a number of different attributes to flourishing. One is curiosity. Another is wonder, surprise, novelty and awe. And those things in combination and you can pick your flavor, really start to help you open up those neural pathways to what's possible. I think that's what we all want, but it's hard to do.

Ivy Ross:

And I think now, especially when we have so many problems to solve, we have to be a curious species because that's the only way we're going to solve some of these problems is to ask new questions. We interview someone in the book, Barb Groth, who started the Nomadic School of Wonder. And she literally, and I know you've done this with some of your group early on, but this idea that taking people to places and curating wonder experiences... I remember I once did one of these trips with her. We didn't get the itinerary in advance. It was the surprise and delight of where were we going and what was going to happen when we got there.

Susan Magsamen:

And to add to that, it turns out that the brain's reward systems are working overtime when you're looking at subjects that you don't have the immediate answer to. So this idea of mystery, living in the mystery and pursuing the act of discovery is a reward in and of itself. And I think tying it back to why is that, what is really happening, helps us to think about how to use it in more sometimes even practical ways.

Ivy Ross:

Yeah. Does that relate Susan to the research that was even with music, like improv music versus sheet music? They put musicians in an MRI to see how their brains differed between people playing a piece of known music versus this idea of riffing off of each other, not knowing where you're going and improvising.

Susan Magsamen:

Yeah. We talked to Charles Limb in the book. He's the person that did the improv studies with rehearsed performance music and also improvisation. And in the prefrontal cortex, there's two different parts of the brain. One is self-regulating, making sure that you're perfect and you're doing it right and you're not messing up. Even for the professional musician, they're always going, "Oh, did I get that right?" And then there's a part of the brain that literally turns off so that you're not critiquing yourself, you're not judging yourself. And that's really where this area, what we call flow or being in the moment, really happens. And both things are important in our lives, but there are moments when you just want to be in the flow, and that's where that happens.

Charlie Melcher:

I love that section about improv and riffing. I've often said the best place to be at an improv comedy show is on the stage doing the improv, even people who are nervous and might not want to, but the opportunity to get into the experience to be literally co-creating it or making it up as you go, you share the science behind that and why that is an amazing state to be in, one that is healthy and expanding to your brain and to your sense of self.

And I think that that's one of the things, again, we've talked about at Future of Storytelling over the years, which is that the opening up for stories to be interactive and participatory, to not be fixed on a rail, to let people have agency and the opportunity to be a hero in their own adventures, well then they're creating the story in real time. If they're doing LARPing, live action role playing, you're improving every minute, you're living this story. I feel like we're at this place where people are tired of being passive and confined to certain types of boxes. It feels to me like we're hopefully on the verge of an age of creativity and some wonder.

Ivy Ross:

Absolutely. I think even the field of biodesign or bioengineering, you're taking scientists with designers, and I think we're going to find a lot more of this multidisciplinary approach. We each have our own unique brains like our fingerprints are unique. And so this idea, instead of keeping it to ourselves at our desk, to really learn how to riff off of each other's brains and build on it, it's absolutely an ingredient that we need for the future. But one of the way you exercise those muscles is no judgment. I think in improv they say no thinky. So it's no judgment, just express yourselves. It's not about whether you're a good artist or bad artist, start scribbling.

Susan Magsamen:

And the other thing, I was talking about the arts work on different parts of the brain. They also are multimodal. So it's like when you think about you're bringing different kinds of people together, the arts bring different kinds of attributes together. Sound does something different than touch. And so you're actually bringing so much to bear, which I think makes a huge difference as well. And we see it all the time in the way that you bring an arts form to a problem, and it operates on so many different levels, physiologically, behaviorally, psychologically. And that makes a huge difference.

Ivy Ross:

And it's just a matter of giving people permission because this has always been available, but we haven't been focusing on it. So it's really giving people permission in some cases to do the things they knew intuitively were good for them, but in other cases not realizing it and thinking it was just something only for a small group of people.

Charlie Melcher:

I also was moved by your discussion of awe and this idea that you could get to a state where you're part of something much bigger than yourself, and that when you are having that feeling of awe, you get out of that self-centered me ego-driven way of seeing the world and you have that opportunity to be more community-centered and feel connected to everything around you. And I think when you're talking about society and the changes and the need for fundamental shifts, that's one of them. We need a lot more awe to get people out of the me, me, me into the we to start to solve some of these bigger problems.

Susan Magsamen:

Well, and the benefits of awe, think about it from a physiological perspective. I don't know the last time you felt a true sense of awe. I mentioned earlier that I was so fortunate. I've been a northern light seeker for my whole life, and I finally, this year, saw them, and I'm a different person for seeing them. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. And I look at pictures and they trigger it a bit. But when you are bathed in something that is so extraordinary, especially something from nature for me, is just amazing. And it down regulates your nervous system. It really grounds you into who you are and what matters. And it changes the way you see the world and hopefully, from a neuroplastic point of view, for a long time.

And I think there's something about that that we undervalue in our very fast-paced what's next? I saw that, what's the next thing? Bright, shiny object. We lose that amazing sense of what is really awesome. And I think bringing that back will really... Just looking for it, looking for moments of awe. And they're perfect moments, right?

Ivy Ross:

Yeah, and your brain has changed forever now because of that experience.

Charlie Melcher:

Surprise and delight does feel like another of those things that we crave as human beings. Is there neurological reason for that?

Susan Magsamen:

Well, I think boredom. That's really how humanity has moved forward is going one step further, this novelty of not knowing what's on the other side. We crave that. That's, again, this idea of curiosity, which I think we're evolutionarily hardwired for. And so without it, we stagnate. We really don't grow. So if you think about things right now in society, loneliness and belonging, those things really are about stagnant, being stagnant, being isolated, not being inspired or not having those kinds of connections or surprise or novelty at its best. And it doesn't make us healthy. It makes us sick, so we need it. And when we get it, all of the neurotransmitters and hormones around dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin, all those things go crazy. They make us feel alive. And that's basic biology. And when we don't do it, we know that we don't feel well. And the more you sit, the more you sit and the more you stagnate. So that's just part of who we are.

Ivy Ross:

For people that can't go to these places, putting on a headset potentially and having your mind believe you're in these places, actually will release the same neurotransmitters. There's some people that can't afford to go to some of these places that we're talking about, but if your brain thinks you're there and sends those signals to your body, that's second best for sure.

Susan Magsamen:

And there's very good studies that show that there's very similar neurobiological activity in those virtual spaces versus the... Now you can put smell into spaces, you can experience touch, and so you can create very simulated experiences that feel incredibly real, and that's super important. We talk about something in the book called Snow World, where it's being used for burn patients and it's animations of penguins and snowmen and people sliding down hills. And it serves as a way to distract a patient who is having bandages changed, and as a result, they're not feeling as much pain, then they're not taking as much opioid or pain medicine. And so this immersive experience is literally taking them to another place.

Charlie Melcher:

We're in a transition from an age where we were passive learners, passive workers. We sat and looked at screens or everything was kind of one way, and our job was just to consume it. And we are at this moment where we're starting to unlock and enable so many more people's creativity. And given the science that you all have so nicely described in the book, it gives great hope that this is going to have a very positive effect on human beings and hopefully leave us in a place that's less selfish, less alienated from each other and from ourselves. And perhaps with that in a world where there's just a greater deal of human flourishing,

Ivy Ross:

I choose to believe that. I think we can't see it right now because we're moving through something to get to another level. But I think a lot of these things with their pros and cons that you can question them, they are rewiring us on some level. We're moving to this multidimensional world, whether it's the interests we have, the coming away from, I think we've gone flatlined, and now we're multidimensional on many levels in terms of what we're craving, the things we enjoy, the professions that we're in. This next generation is going to have six professions, not six jobs. So we're moving towards something we can't even imagine now. And that's why I'm saying that imagination... When I look, I always look and say, "Why is this happening?" I can feel, I can't articulate it, but I could feel that we are being rewired to move us toward a different place. And there's hard times in that transition and there's good times, but I feel like it's going to be a place that we can't even yet imagine, but it will become clearer over time.

Susan Magsamen:

I think we're building muscle too. We're building creative muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it. And so in some ways, we're experimenting, we're playing with, we're seeing what muscle and we're building capacity, and that's messy and that's painful, but over time you get better at it. So this is why Ivy and I are calling for 20 minutes of an art practice a day, like exercise, like good nutrition. And I think those are the things that are going to help to shape the society. And I think we are on a verge of a cultural shift where these art experiences are going to provide the kinds of potent things that we need to solve some of the problems that are happening in the world today. But you don't have to wait. And I think that's a big message that we're also trying to say.

Charlie Melcher:

I love that idea of getting your art rate up for 20 minutes a day.

Susan Magsamen:

That's good. That's really good.

Ivy Ross:

That's good.

Susan Magsamen:

We haven't heard that. We're going to take that. We're stealing that.

Charlie Melcher:

I just want to thank you for the book, for taking the time to capture all of those stories and all of that science because really you've brought the two together so artfully in this book, and I really hope that it has an impact that many people will read it and choose to lean more into their creative side and appreciate the incredible value for their own wellbeing and for that of our society and our world. Art is not an elitist thing, it's for everyone.

Susan Magsamen:

Yeah. Tell their story, right?

Ivy Ross:

Well, we want that too. And thank you for letting us talk about it. It was so much fun to talk with you about it.

Charlie Melcher:

Pleasure is all mine. Warm thanks to Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen for joining me on today's podcast. To buy their book, Your Brain on Art, and learn more about their work, please visit the links in the episode's description. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. If you did, please consider subscribing to the FoST Podcast and leaving us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts. You can also learn more about our other activities and become part of the FoST community by signing up for our free monthly newsletter at fost.org. The FoST Podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partner Charts and Leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.