The Science of Creativity

Dr. Jonathan Feinstein, a Yale professor and author on creativity, dives into the developmental paths of creative individuals. He shares insights on how personal backgrounds shape creative journeys, arguing that everyone has untapped creativity waiting to be unleashed. Feinstein discusses the need to remove barriers like anxiety to encourage expression. He emphasizes flexibility and guidance in fostering creativity, highlighting examples from notable innovators. Ultimately, he advocates for understanding and recognizing the rich, diverse patterns of creativity in all people.

Everyone who works in television and movie comedy knows Charna Halpern. She's trained thousands of actors, writers, and producers at her Chicago theater, founded in 1981, called the iO theater. In this episode, Charna tells personal and funny stories about actors from Chris Farley and Neil Flynn to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Along with actor and director Del Close, Charna invented modern improvisational theater in the 1980s. The art form known as long form improvisation—a 20 or 30-minute fully improvised one-act play—was developed at the iO theater, and is still found on their stage at seven nights a week at 1501 N. Kingsbury Street in Chicago. Charna is one of the best-known and best-loved people in comedy because she developed a system for training actors how to improvise together. Her training takes a full year and it's so effective that TV producers, like Lorne Michaels, regularly visit iO theater to audition the actors who've graduated from the program. Sometimes on Saturday Night Live, every actor was once at the iO theater. Charna created a family, a community, that she lovingly calls "my people." Here are just a few of the famous actors and writers who we talk about in this episode (in order of mention): Lorne Michaels; Cecily Strong; Tina Fey; Amy Poehler; Mike Myers; Vanessa Bayer; Adam McKay; Brian Stack; Stephen Colbert; David Koechner; Rachel Dratch; Chris Farley; Sarah Silverman; Stephanie Ware; Neil Flynn; Larry David; Seth Myers; John Lutz; Matt Walsh; Tim Meadows. She even tells a story about how she let Adam McKay sleep on her couch before he was famous because he couldn't afford to stay in Chicago. When I was doing my research on improvisation in the early 1990s, the theater was called "Improv Olympic" and only later renamed "iO." Don't tell anyone I said that. For more information: iO theater. https://ioimprov.com/ Truth in Comedy. Charna Halpern, Del Close, Kim Howard Johnson. Art by Committee. Charna Halpern. Music by license from SoundStripe: "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich Copyright (c) 2025 Keith Sawyer

Mark Runco, a leading expert in creativity and Professor at Southern Oregon University, dives into the unique nature of human creativity versus generative AI. He critiques the notion that AI can truly replicate creativity, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and intrinsic motivation in creative processes. Runco advocates for educational practices that nurture these qualities, offering actionable strategies to enhance creativity in everyday life. He discusses the complexities of creativity's definition in the AI era, highlighting the need for a nuanced understanding.

Steve Heller is arguably the world's best-known design educator, with over 200 books on graphic design, illustration, and political art. I interviewed him for my 2025 book Learning to See. His books include Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design; Teaching Graphic Design; and The Education of an Illustrator (with Marshall Arisman). He's spent most of his career at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he's now the Special Assistant to the President and the Co-Founder and Co-Chair Emeritus of the MFA Design Department. He's won numerous awards including Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Mind Award; Smithsonian Design Museum; National Endowment for the Arts; AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement; and many others. For 33 years, he was an art director at the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review. In this interview, he gives amazing insights about how to teach graphic design and illustration. For more information: Steve Heller's web site Book: Teaching Graphic Design Book: The Education of an Illustrator Sawyer's book Learning to See Music by license from SoundStripe: "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich Copyright (c) 2025 Keith Sawyer

The much-anticipated art and design book Learning to See was just published by MIT Press! In this episode, author Keith Sawyer talks with Amy Climer about his new book. Learning to See is an engaging and profound account of how professional artists and designers create and how they teach others to do it. Keith spent over ten years interviewing a hundred professors who've taught in 50 different colleges, universities, and institutes. He also interviewed students to learn about the personal transformation they go through as they learn to see and think like successful creative professionals. Learning to See describes project assignments and studio class sessions in over 20 different disciplines, revealing the shared essence of art and design. Learning to See tells the stories of the professional artists and designers who teach in BFA and MFA programs throughout the U.S., including top schools in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. These articulate and experienced educators share their insights about how to guide younger artists and designers to realize their full creative potential. In the best BFA and MFA programs, students learn to see things they couldn't see before, and they learn to think in new ways. In Learning to See, you meet professors and students in over 20 different art and design disciplines—from painting and sculpture to graphic design and architecture. By reading what they say in their conversations and their classrooms, you learn that becoming an artist or designer is not about learning to draw or sew or weld—it is about learning to see. This book is for anyone who wants to better understand how professional artists and designers see, think, and make. Notes Book web site: Learning to See Keith Sawyer's web site: www.keithsawyer.com Amy Climer's web site: www.climerconsulting.com Music by license from SoundStripe: "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich Copyright (c) 2025 Keith Sawyer

Hansika Kapoor, a creativity researcher from India focusing on dark creativity, discusses how even good ideas can lead to harmful actions. Angie Miller, working with the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, highlights the impact of arts degrees on career paths, emphasizing the value of creative education. Taylor Worley shares intriguing findings on 'slow looking,' revealing how taking time to appreciate art enhances emotional connection and understanding. Together, they unveil groundbreaking research that reshapes our views on creativity and art.

We're going to leave the podcast studio and travel to Yale University for the 2025 creativity research conference! This episode has six interviews with leading-edge creativity researchers and the next episode has five more. There were over two hundred researchers at Yale, from around the world, including Japan, India, Europe, and South America. This is the official American Psychological Association creativity research conference. In this episode, you'll hear about research that is SO NEW that it hasn't even been published yet. Top creativity researchers attend this conference each year so that they can find out about the latest research findings, and now you can hear about it, too. This episode takes you to the conference room floor. Listen to this episode and the next one, because there is too much great research for just one episode! Dr. Sawyer invited six researchers to tell us about their latest research findings, and there are five more in the next episode. Chapters 1:49 Conference welcome from Roni Reiter-Palmon 2:49 Kristin Lamb: Imagination and Creativity 9:40 Ahmad Rahimi: Using Large Language Models to Assess Student Creativity with Games 13:43 Interlude 14:41 Shoshi Kesari: Improv Theater with Adults 20:34 Denis Dumas: Children and the balance between originality and appropriateness 31:15 Michael Mumford: Creativity research from the 1970s to today 42:11 Outro 43:19 Closer Resources Conference web site Conference detailed schedule of presentations Music by license from SoundStripe: "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich Copyright (c) 2025 Keith Sawyer

Dr. Leidy Klotz is a professor at the University of Virginia, and the author of the book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. In this episode, we talk about how his research contributes to our understanding of how to approach and solve problems and how to change and innovate. This is an insightful conversation between two psychologists who really love to study how people think and act! Dr. Klotz's research is about so much more than creativity, but his research is linked to a lot of creativity topics, including editing during the process, architectural design, and education. Please take a look at Dr. Leidy Klotz's book, which is called Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, and visit his web site at leidyklotz.com. Music by license from SoundStripe: "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich Copyright (c) 2024 Keith Sawyer

Dr. Amy Climer is a thought leader in creativity and innovation. She argues that creativity emerges from a deliberate process. Creativity can be learned, practiced, and repeated. Researchers have discovered a lot about how to teach this effectively, and this is the theme of her new book, Deliberate Creative Teams. In Dr. Climer's view, creativity is an intentional, structured process. For over 20 years, she's been facilitating creativity workshops with teams and organizations. She helps companies learn how to foster an innovative culture through her company Climer Consulting. She's the developer of the Deliberate CreativeⓇ Team Scale and the ClimerⓇ Cards, both powerful tools for enhancing team creativity. For more information: Amy's company: Climer Consulting Amy's book: Deliberate Creative Teams Music by license from SoundStripe: "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich Copyright (c) 2024 Keith Sawyer

Dr. Yoed Kenett studies the types of thinking and knowledge that support creativity. His research helps us understand the core mental processes of creativity, including associative thinking and question formulation. In this episode, we talk about the practical implications of his research and we show how that research can be used to enhance your creativity. He's done research at the Hebrew University at Jerusalem; Bar-Ilan University; Brown University; and the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2020, he's been a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences at The Technion: Israel Institute of Technology.