Have we forgotten how to play?

The loss of children playing

0:00This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way?

0:31Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zamorodi. 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.

1:02But there was also one species that was not welcome. The Japanese beetle. Japanese beetles were eating crops. 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, grackles, and bluebirds.

1:33Robins, 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. She painted a really eerie picture of what would spring be like without the sounds of birds. 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.

2:03Ultimately, it led to the environmental movement. The environmental movement led to pesticide bans, land conservation efforts, and a new appreciation for wildlife, especially birds. 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.

2:34But 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. We have a different kind of silent spring now. Compare that to when Peter was growing up in the 1950s. If school wasn't in session and it was daylight, there would pretty much always be children outdoors.

3:10You 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. But over time, kids became restricted to how, when, and where they could play. And as a result... We aren't hearing the sounds of children because the children are not outdoors. Without play, Peter says, we're limiting the potential of an entire generation of humans.

3:42All 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.

Evolutionary roots of childhood play

4:01So 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.

4:34And what changes he thinks we should make to kids' lives right now. But before we look forward, Peter says we need to look back. 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.

5:14The 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 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.

5:49So we were learning a lot of very important skills that are important throughout your life. 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 U.S. history or even Western history, this, like, idealized 50s and post-World War II?

6:29The Industrial Era was a terrible time for many children who worked at sweatshops, who were, in some sense, slave laborers. Because, 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.

7:00They 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. 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.

How children's freedom vanished

7:40It'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. 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.

8:22One 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. Homework was not really a thing for elementary school students in the 1950s and 1960s, at least not at most schools.

8:57So we began to chip away in children's freedom by giving them more and more time at school. That was one change.

9:08Other changes were happening, too. Really beginning in the 1960s, we began to encourage children to go into adult-directed sports. Little League Baseball, Pee Wee Football. These organizations began to take the place of pickup games in neighborhoods. You're being told what to do by the coaches. And in the 1950s, screens started to eat into playtime. You could go home from school and watch Mickey Mouse Club on television beginning in the late 1950s,

9:40instead of staying outside playing with other kids. At first glance, other transformations in American life back then might not seem related to play at all, like the size of houses. Houses got much bigger over this time and families got much smaller. But as houses grew and families shrank... 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.

10:11There 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. ...to be arrested in front of her children, all because her then 10-year-old son was spotted walking alone in Mineral Bluff, Georgia. A mom was sentenced to jail time and put on a child abuse registry for letting her 5-year-old go for a walk by himself. His parents say they never thought letting him go to a playground blocks away would lead to child neglect investigation.

10:47So 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. 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?

11:17Yes, 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,

11:53that correlates with poor mental health. This is true regardless of age. So how do you develop 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,

12:24which is going to lead to high anxiety and depression. It leads to a kind of sense of helplessness, among other things. A big part of the definition of depression is helplessness. 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.

12:55I'm Manoush Zomorodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

13:03It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Achievement pressure and school stress

13:17I'm Manoush Zomorodi. 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. There is no meaningful correlation

13:50between 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.

14:30By making big tech the boogeyman, Peter says we're ignoring what the kids are actually telling us is the problem. 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. In his new book, Restoring Childhood, he lays out how opportunities for kids to play freely and independently

15:03have been vanishing since the 1960s, a trend that accelerated as the economy became more globalized and more competitive. 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

15:33to 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. Right. So you want your child to do well in school. You believe somehow doing well in school is going to protect their economic future. Sure. 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,

16:06the 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 A's, 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 in life.

16:38There 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.

16:54The 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

17:25given to the students. 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. And so school became even more stressful

17:55by 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-age students. That focus on test scores meant that kids didn't have time to pursue their own interests and passions in school.

18:26Here's how Peter put it on the TED stage. 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 passionate interest knows that at least when you're involved in that interest,

18:57work and play and learning are all one and the same thing.

19:03What 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. So let's talk about, you have actually helped design some programs for schools to increase play. And I'm just reading

19:34that 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? 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

20:05that 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.

20:35So by third or fourth grade, those who were in the group that had early academic training 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. It's a hard lesson to hear as a parent, Peter, I think. You know, it's, you try to give your kid as many opportunities as you possibly can

21:06in 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? 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

21:36and 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 who are suffering the most, actually, are those who are attending so-called high-achievement schools.

22:08The ones that pride themselves in getting kids into Ivy League colleges and the like and pride themselves in high test scores.

22:18There'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. 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-slash-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

22:48to 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. Right. And I think we also have to think about the difference between giving them an opportunity and forcing them along a track.

23:19So 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

23:50today 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

24:20to 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. 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.

24:51That 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.

25:10On the show today, how play shapes who we are and how some lessons could never happen in the classroom.

Finding independence on the water

25:19Hey, Tracy, are you there? Hi, how are you? Hey, I'm doing well. I'm thrilled to hear your voice. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh, not at all. This is Tracy Edwards. My name is Tracy Edwards. I am a around-the-world sailor and a social activist. Well, you're a record-breaking around-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? Yeah, I think not a good student would be the understatement of the century.

25:49I was just about opposite to everything you would hope to have in a daughter. 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.

26:22I 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. 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 and was arrested

26:53and, yeah, and then it was eventually expelled from school. What? Like, what did you do? What did your mom do? My poor mother. My mother took a long, hard look at me and said, right, 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. Wow. Yeah. But at 16, I left home

27:24and I went backpacking to Greece and ended up working in a bar in Greece, which is how I ended up getting onto boats. 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. 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,

27:55you know, once you 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. 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. So, I mean, it was hard work, but when you're sailing around the Greek islands, you know, you can kind of

28:25put up with anything.

28:29I 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.

28:58Okay, 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. Yes. How did that happen? 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

29:29if 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, I mean, that's a bit profound for two days out into the Atlantic.

29:57But I thought, wow, he's right. And in two days, he taught me to navigate.

30:04He taught me how to use a sextant, a book of tables, charts. And it was one of 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. And did you think, you know, forget doing the washing. This is, I got to find my way across various oceans. Not really, because,

30:35well, because women didn't do that. I could navigate, but I wasn't allowed to at that time. This is 35, 40 years ago. You got on and your job was cook or stewardess. So, I kind of put that to one side, I guess, in my mind. I sailed many oceans. So, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, the Seychelles.

31:06But 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. 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 Anoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

31:36We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Sailing around the world

31:52I'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. And then, I heard about the 85-86

32:23Whipbread Around the World race. What is the Whipbread for people who've never heard of it? The Whipbread Around the World race is the toughest yacht race in the world. It starts and finishes in the UK, and it's 33,000 miles and it's nine months. And it was the pinnacle of ocean racing, you know, 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

32:54have got on a boat as anything other than a cook. But I was, you know, okay, fine, I'll do that. So I did the 8586 Whipbread on a boat called Atlantic Privateer, which was very aptly named because they were a complete bunch of pirates, these guys. I mean, I adored them, but I could have killed them a lot of times as well. You were the only woman on the boat for nine months traveling the world on a, that's it, like just you. Yeah. Well, we were racing. So you're racing around the world, so it's very focused,

33:24it's very professional. You know, there were 26 boats, I think, in that race. So 260 crew and there were three girls. Okay. So you hear about this around the world race and you decide, 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? Um, no, not really. They were, they were such great sailors and I learned

33:54so 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

34:25I felt that I was being prevented from doing something I wanted to do because I was a girl because to my mum it was no surprise, you know, she was like, oh, well, welcome to the real world but, you know, she said another thing which was, again, which set me off 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. Your mum. She was an amazing woman. I miss her so much. Yeah. So I thought, well, how do I

34:55change it? Okay,

34:58well, I have to have my own boat.

35:01I 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 sailor out of the world to much laughter and derisory comments that I thought, right, okay, I am now doing this for every woman in the

35:32world.

35:34You know, women would turn up on my doorstep and go, right, point me in the direction where I can help, you know, and they'd be like, okay, well, you can stuff those sponsorship envelopes when 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 were all these multi-million pound male racing teams, you know, with their shiny boats and their shiny crew and there was us.

36:06Ragtag girl. I love it. 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. 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 is going to fall apart in the middle of an ocean.

36:27Well, 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.

36:57We'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. Everyone else was just starting out. So we almost had an advantage. The start of the Whitbread is a celebration of sail. September 2nd, 1989, you line up with the other boats in your class to embark on a race around the

37:28world.

37:31Some people didn't think that you'd make it. Some of them thought that you and your group of women were going to die at sea. What was the mood like? Oh, God, we were completely confident. Onboard made, Tracy Edwards had something to prove. We never had any doubts. Really? Yeah, oh, absolutely. 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

38:02and 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 only men can sail around the world thing. 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.

38:27But, 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. Freezing cold, huge seas, and winds of 40 to 50 miles per hour. And we were completely confident that we were going to be able to win that leg, actually, and we did.

38:57You 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? We were a lot more collaborative as a team. My word was final, and my decision was final, because someone has to take responsibility, and the buck always thoughts of 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'd just talked for nine months pretty much.

39:35I 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. 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. Really? They banned them? Yeah.

40:05I'm sorry, but if you've got Top Dunn 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, yeah. What a welcome though awaits Tracy Edwards and her crew. So tell me how the race ended. Well, the race ended up with us

40:36coming second overall and winning two legs. Yes, it's an historic moment. Second in your division, which is a really big deal. It's the best result for a British boat since 1977 and it hasn't actually been beaten. Maidens engulfed by a huge spectator fleet. It was extraordinary. A flotilla of 600 yachts came out to meet us. As the 12 women complete the task they set out to do nine months ago.

41:0150,000 people standing on the dock. I mean, literally climbing over each other. It was absolutely amazing. 30 years later, I understand how we did change things. At the time, I don't think we realised quite the impact that we'd had, but we knew that we'd achieved something which we could be proud of and which we hope the next female crew could build on. I hope that this has done a lot for British yachting

41:32and 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.

41:43So, you all went your separate ways, is that right? Yeah, so a lot of the crew got really great jobs on racing boats. People got married, I got married, then got divorced very quickly, and then I went into another sailing project. I did the first female crew to attempt 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

42:14racing team, because the whole point about getting all-female crews wasn't that 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. So, we had six girls and six guys on a 125-foot catamaran, fastest boat in the world world at the time, and a male skipper and a female skipper. It worked absolutely brilliantly. I mean, it was harmonious, it was

42:45competitive, 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.

43:06That 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 non-profit 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.

Photographic views of playgrounds

43:32On 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.

43:50China's most influential philosopher and thinker, Confucius or Kongzi, 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.

44:10This is Jia Han. And Jia Han is my older daughter. And I know Jia Han sounds like fried rice in Japanese. And I love fried rice very much. But I can 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. And most importantly, we also wanted her to play and to have fun. Just about a year ago,

44:41when Jia Han 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 far away for a two-year-old. But then, the playgrounds is colourful. The foam mats are padded and there are

45:12slides that you can play around. She immediately understood that this was her world. 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

45:43young 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, and only return home when my knees and elbows are bruised and sweaty. And it also got back to me and wondered, what do I make sense of this? Because since then, I feel very detached from playgrounds.

46:13So, 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.

46:27This is the same playground that Jia Han 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. 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

46:57about looking at something from above directly down. Initially, when we did this project, I did not expect to see some of the things we discover. In the end, I have photographed 100 playgrounds across Singapore. 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. Very often, when we do the shoots at these playgrounds, we get

47:28approached 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

47:59just right in this playground. 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.

48:20And 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. And so, in conclusion, you should just take your child out to play today. Thank you very much. That was photographer Stefan Chow. You can see his full TED Talk at TED.com.

Credits and production

48:51Thank 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 Guerin, James De La Housie, Harsha Nahada, and Matthew Cloutier. Our audio engineer was David Greenberg. Our theme music was written by Ramtin

49:21Arablui. Our partners at TED are Sal Khan, Logan McClure-Davda, Helen Walters, Roxanne Hilash, and Daniela Balorezzo. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.