The Keys to Creativity with Author and Journalist Hilde Østby

00;00;00;01 – 00;00;48;04
Unknown
Brought to you by Flow Spark Media. Welcome to another episode of the Science Centric Podcast. If you’re new to this show, it’s where we have thought provoking conversations about science, society and the natural world. And who am I? I am your host, Eric Olson, filmmaker, journalist, and all around curious, creative with a passion for science and nature. So it’s a new year, and I thought it would be a great time for an episode that would help us kick off the year on a positive and productive note.

00;00;48;07 – 00;01;18;09
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So I invited journalist and author Hilda S.B. to discuss her latest book, The Key to Creativity, The Science Behind Ideas and How Daydreaming Can Change the World. After all, if we’re going to solve some of the pressing problems facing humanity, we’re going to have to get creative. In my wide ranging conversation with Hilda, we discussed the different types of creativity The brain states that produce creative thoughts and those the most likely to block them.

00;01;18;12 – 00;01;46;09
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The activities most likely to put you in a creative mindset and why certain groups have extra challenges when it comes to reaching peak creativity. All that and more is coming up. So tune in. Turn on and prepare to learn how you can bring the most creativity out of the billions of neurons parked right between your ears. But before we jump into this episode, just a quick reminder to subscribe to the channel and hit that little bell there for notifications when new content goes live.

00;01;46;12 – 00;02;21;00
Unknown
Thanks for helping this channel to grow and for making the world a little more science centric. My first question about your book and about the subject of creativity is a big one, which is what is creativity? And in addition to that, is there more than one type of creativity? Yeah, that’s interesting. And I have to say that creativity is the human tech of mind.

00;02;21;02 – 00;03;10;15
Unknown
It is being human. And I can specify it means that our brains are constantly working out stories about who we are and what we do in the universe. So no matter what we experience, we will color this experience with a other experience or earlier experiences and with our expectations of the future. So we’re constantly writing a story about ourselves and what we’re doing, and we’re constantly trying to understand other people and all the commitments around us so that we can talk about several types of creativity, of course, but the kind of most basic that we do all the time, which is that the kind of everyone is doing this from the mailman to kind of

00;03;10;16 – 00;03;41;10
Unknown
an engineer or an executive in their company, whatever you are, solving problems and solving problems is a very basic way of doing creative work, and we all do it constantly. Making dinner or writing a novel. So that is one of the most basic forms of creativity, and it makes us happy to solve problems. So we humans, we love to solve problems no matter what they are.

00;03;41;13 – 00;04;20;25
Unknown
And the other kind of it’s several types of creativity. Like there’s kind of a ha moments that I wrote a whole chapter in my book. The moments are another type of kind of more sudden ideas just pop into your head. And I’ve talked to several people that have have these kind of sudden moments. One guy that had this very good idea for he’s a dentist, but he had this very good idea, it turned out for how to construct modern skills.

00;04;20;28 – 00;05;02;08
Unknown
And now modern skills are of constructed just as he imagined they would be. And he had this just at the moment. It was in the middle of the summer even. It wasn’t even skiing season. So that is another kind of creativity that is kind of more valued than the problem solving type of creativity, because that is also linked to this creative genius who suddenly gets this epiphany and changes the world type of, Yeah, I’m writing about that as well, which is because this is one of the biggest geniuses in our time.

00;05;02;11 – 00;05;26;23
Unknown
You know Einstein here? Yeah, He made a problem for himself. So it’s part of problem solving. It made a problem for himself. And then after ten years of just thinking about this problem, he’s suddenly out of the blue. He solved it. He gave himself the problem. Can I look myself in the mirror? If I’m traveling at light speed?

00;05;26;25 – 00;05;49;03
Unknown
Because you’re dependent on the light to get the picture back from the mirror. Right. Right. They gave himself this problem. Is several stories concern. I think a lot of people I think a lot of people don’t know that story, though. They don’t know that that that he had this he’d given himself this problem. I mean, he’s very famous for the equals m.c squared equation.

00;05;49;03 – 00;06;29;14
Unknown
But I don’t think that they knew where it came from. This problem that he was trying to sort out. And it’s also a story of a tram in the in Weimar. I think he gave himself this problem in several ways. But after ten years of just the meandering around this, he suddenly out of the blue, ten years after he was 25, now he took his friend Michela Bosso, and then his head suddenly in the middle of the sentence, he said, Now I know the situation and he wrote the relativity theory from there.

00;06;29;16 – 00;07;09;13
Unknown
That’s that same afternoon. Yeah, it’s. I’ve also heard that I read somewhere that he that he almost felt it in his body or something. He knew this was right. Yeah. And that is typical for moments that you feel that they are right. There’s a good feeling going through your body. It’s a signal increase in perception, which sounds very technical, but it means it’s this like, you know, when you play Tetris, a few darkest moments where all are lined up, so everything is lined up suddenly and you can see everything clearly.

00;07;09;15 – 00;07;43;04
Unknown
So I use this example of a guy realizing that his wife is cheating on him. And that feels good. It shouldn’t, but it feels good because suddenly everything makes sense. That for this was unclear and didn’t make sense. Right. There’s a sudden moment of claims increase in perception. It feels very true. And that is what is very misleading about these moments because that goes for a conspiracy theories as well.

00;07;43;07 – 00;08;12;10
Unknown
They they feel very true. I mean, it’s an increase in perception and everything is like, okay, all the world’s leaders are losers. Yeah, it all makes sense now of an increase in perception. It feels very true. And the the last thing about the moments, they are true. It’s increase in perception and you feel happy when you get them.

00;08;12;12 – 00;08;43;22
Unknown
They’re very memorable also. So most of them you will remember exactly when you have this kind of a ha moment where you where we’re at the time. Yeah. Hey there. If you made it this far through the episode, you’re probably enjoying this conversation. I’m learning a few new things along the way. If so, I’d really appreciate your support so that we can bring you even more quality science and nature content to you to head on over to our Patreon page to find out how you can support us directly.

00;08;43;25 – 00;09;05;24
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We have three tiers you can join. And they started only a dollar a month. The links in the description below and thank you to our existing patrons for their support. Now on with the show. So you mentioned problem solving. You mentioned these sort of flashes of insight of of, you know, where everything makes sense all of a sudden.

00;09;05;27 – 00;09;45;29
Unknown
But there’s also, you know, artistic creativity. Imagination. How does that how does that relate to the to the other two? Yeah, well, it’s they are both partway through problem solving. I mean, when I write a book, it’s kind of a series of problems that have to solve throughout the book and the imagination. That is where I had to get some electricity through my brain to get into into the part of my brain where the imagination is living freely.

00;09;46;00 – 00;10;14;26
Unknown
And the fact is that scientists, brain scientists call this part of the brain or the system in the brain for the default network. And this was discovered by a researcher called Marcus Rachel. He was investigating the frontal lobe. He was trying to find out more about the executive function in the brain, which is what we’re doing right now.

00;10;14;26 – 00;10;44;15
Unknown
We’re in the executive function where we’re concentrated on something outside ourselves, but trying to solve problems together with talking. We have to have a direction through this talk, etc.. So we’re engaging our executive function. And when we’re in the executive function, we’re very eager to look at everything that is irrelevant to our talk right now, right. Or to whatever kind of problem solving we are doing.

00;10;44;17 – 00;11;31;12
Unknown
We’re trying to work out all all kind of irrelevant sounds and visions and also all irrelevant ideas and kind of associative thoughts, kind of wild associate association. So, yeah, Marcus Rachel was just trying to find out how the executive function is working and where it is. And he was telling people while they were solving problems he gave them and then he said to the people who was skimming that they should just think about nothing so that he could see what the kind of baseline of the brain would be when we’re just not thinking about anything.

00;11;31;15 – 00;12;03;15
Unknown
And to his surprise, he could then see that these people were jumping from higher activity in this problem area, frontal lobe and the temporal lobe. And then there were high level of activity. Just a little more back in the brain. And he called this default mode network because he could see that the brain was jumping back into this brain system The minute the brain wasn’t solving problems in the outside world.

00;12;03;18 – 00;12;33;24
Unknown
And he asked people, what were you thinking about? I told you to think about nothing. And people say, Yeah, I was thinking about nothing. I was thinking about my staff. The holiday next year, My my previous holiday. That’s uncomfortable talk with my boss. I forgot to pay a bill, etc., etc.. All these random thoughts that just pushed through our brain when we’re not doing anything or while we’re waiting on the bus, not doing anything specific, not picking up a phone.

00;12;33;27 – 00;13;05;00
Unknown
Right. Staring into space. My daughter does it a lot. Just sit there. Yeah. Stare into space and I think we call it in the US and I don’t know if it translates, but zoning out, telling us. Zoning out. Yeah, Yeah, we we know and know that it’s extremely important to the brain. It has to do with mental health and it has to do with this wonderful imagination and all of our human creativity.

00;13;05;02 – 00;13;27;06
Unknown
We can harvest a lot from being sold out in the winter. We have a much more kind of negative way of talking about it. So we call it the cow stare. So that’s very negative in no way to just sit there and be inactive. So we should always be doing something. Otherwise you’re like a cow, right? Or a goat.

00;13;27;06 – 00;14;02;21
Unknown
It’s also called a goat stare. Even worse. But these 15, 20 years with research on this specific system in the brain has shown how important this to the human imagination. It’s important for us to also to consolidate memories in the long term memory, because that has been the mystery. How do we move experiences over into the long term memory?

00;14;02;27 – 00;14;27;20
Unknown
So things are flashing through our brain all the time. We’re experiencing things all the time, but how does it kind of stick to stick? And that happens when we are just going around in our own thoughts summing up and we now know about memory. I also read the book about memory with my sister, who’s an expert in memory, and that’s why I know a lot about the memory.

00;14;27;23 – 00;15;03;11
Unknown
We also know now that memory is the raw material for our vision. So the future and visions for the future is also kind of a creative material. It’s like I used to say, the first La Humankind ever made was a science fiction. That means we use what we know about the future to construct all these visions of that of the past, or to have constructivist visions of the future.

00;15;03;13 – 00;15;25;09
Unknown
And that is what you do in science fiction, right? You know something about the past and you cast it into the future. You exaggerate. And you know, also to have these visions is up to the present in itself. So when you’re very depressed, you have a very vague memory and you also have very vague visions of the future.

00;15;25;11 – 00;15;54;17
Unknown
So it’s kind of our natural antidepressant to have these visions, hope for the future and in this day and mode default mode network, or I call it that they promote because we’ve been here, all these moments appear and all these random thoughts that suddenly can become a novel, a movie and a piece of music, whatever, whatever you want to make, really.

00;15;54;20 – 00;16;25;15
Unknown
And also this is where you find your place in the world. As a human, we are always relating to other humans. So in this system we we think about who am I compared to others who I am, I am my tribe. And that is such a big part of being a writer for me is to know my inner voice, to know my drive, to know where my gaze should fall so that I can write about that specific thing.

00;16;25;18 – 00;16;46;13
Unknown
All my books are initiated by me. I, I need to know that this idea is true to me, that I can live with this idea for two or three years, which is the normal length of a writing process for me. So you have to have this kind of knowledge of your own inner voice and interest, your own passion.

00;16;46;17 – 00;17;16;06
Unknown
What you like and like. And when we are always engaged in the outside world, we lose this sense of direction and we lose this feeling ourselves and our own inner voice. And that’s why I’m so concerned about cell phones, because when you’re constantly engaged here and you’re clicking from thing to thing on TikTok, you don’t get this kind of long time.

00;17;16;06 – 00;17;43;25
Unknown
This high quality, long time where you just figure out yourself who you are yourself and find these ideas and kind of try to construct your own stories about the world. So a lot to unpack there. But let’s start with let’s start with the DM and the default mode network. So it’s it’s not one particular or part of the brain.

00;17;43;25 – 00;18;15;13
Unknown
It’s actually it’s a system, multiple parts of the brain that are all interacting together. Yeah. Okay. And that’s one thing that I’m and of course I’m making kind of this it’s making a dichotomy now between executive function and the demand mode. But research shows that when when we are making art, when we’re experienced artists, this is a this is a study made on desk musicians.

00;18;15;13 – 00;18;47;21
Unknown
When we’re experienced artists, we have the ability to do both at the same time. We have to have direction, right and concentration when we’re executing art. But we also have this ability to wonder during our and in our mind at the same time. So experienced desk musicians compared to amateur desk positions, the experienced ones could be in both system at the same time, kind of doing both things at the same time.

00;18;47;21 – 00;19;23;14
Unknown
Whereas when you’re an amateur, you are very kind of in person because you just need to play that bright note, right? So that’s what’s happening when I’m writing too, that I can feel that that is how flow is. Yeah, I was going to say flow, flow state, that is the blue state and it’s magical. You know, I feel like I have a direction for what I’m writing, but at the same time I can just add, you know, just I can do some kind of improv and they’re on my way to, to this level.

00;19;23;14 – 00;19;44;28
Unknown
It’s just like walking through the woods when you’re not in a hurry, when you’re not stressed, you’re walking through the woods and you can just wander off the path a little bit and just sniff some raspberries or look at the bird. Then you go back to the path and and maybe and the ways you change your mind of where to go out of the woods.

00;19;45;02 – 00;20;10;10
Unknown
You go another way. Then first went right. But you get out of the woods and that is how it feels like for me to write a book. I have a kind of some idea of where to go, but it’s not written in stone. I can also change direction. I can play other of I can use other material. And this is of course, making me very happy.

00;20;10;11 – 00;20;38;22
Unknown
It’s related to happiness. So there are studies showing that this kind of how the system in my brain is interacting has to do with depression and happiness. That means if they’re not interacting a lot, that has to do with depression. But this is all kind of new science and it’s just not investigated that much. So this is a sketch of how it might be in the brain.

00;20;38;25 – 00;21;04;06
Unknown
But I know that that music in particular is kind of this magical activity that people who have had like brain injuries and things playing music is actually a form of therapy because it lights up multiple parts of your brain at the same time. So that doesn’t surprise me in a way that playing music, you’re using both this demand and executive function at the same time.

00;21;04;06 – 00;21;41;22
Unknown
Yeah, I think all artists are doing exactly that, but music is especially complicated. It kind of engages the whole brain, really. It’s both rhythm. The melody is very advanced, right? So music must be one of the most advanced things that humans can do. but because I think all artists have this experience of flow where you kind of both, you both have a direction and a goal with what you’re doing, but you’re still able to kind of pick up things on the way.

00;21;41;24 – 00;22;13;00
Unknown
And that is something related to a lot of happiness. Makes me so happy to do that. When you get this flow feeling, you’re just like, it isn’t anything better. Yeah, yeah. And I can I can actually relate to this because I do. I am, I do play music as well. Improvization I don’t know if I would call myself a jazz musician, but more in the kind of bluesy But it’s improvizational and I know exactly what you’re talking and it’s very relaxing and it just creates great emotions.

00;22;13;00 – 00;22;44;02
Unknown
If I’m in a bad mood, I just pick up my guitar and I, you know, play something and it just, you know, it’s you feel better. After I feel better, I feel more relaxed, I feel better. And that makes sense to both music and literature. I use it in several kinds of therapy. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And of course, with elderly people who use music when they’re starting to get the mantra, that is bringing them back, keeping them more present.

00;22;44;04 – 00;23;11;29
Unknown
Because the music is such a memory machine. It really crept onto all of my memories. And suddenly you can remember some right? Like, like now around Christmas, I don’t have to look at the lyrics or the melody, so I know them by heart. They go straight into my earliest memories. Right? Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I’m coming back to the idea of this default mode network.

00;23;12;02 – 00;23;44;01
Unknown
So another practice that I’m involved in is meditation. Yeah, I’m, I try to do, you know, 15 minutes every morning. Do you think that meditation is a route into that default mode network? Yeah, I, I think so. And it, it has been investigated. I’ve been most mostly interested in yoga in that respect since Yogi myself. So, you know, yoga is kind of a moving meditation.

00;23;44;03 – 00;24;22;09
Unknown
I use yoga as part of my writing that in that respect that without doing yoga, I kind of write when I do yoga, I or you do meditation, you calm your whole body system. In medical research, they call they talk about several kind of states in the body. The one being person cut is very simple, and I think we would say parasympathetic and parasympathetic and parasympathetic.

00;24;22;09 – 00;25;04;07
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Sympathetic network and parasympathetic network. And those are kind of opposite in the way that when you’re very, very stressed, you’re in the sympathetic network and you’re not this empathic person. Yeah, you’re more trying to get out of a difficult situation of and much in our culture is based on this that we are stressed is also a kind of is a house that is tend to be it’s a good thing if you’re stressed then the important person so we like to follow being stressed and the sympathetic mode is much being in a stressed mode.

00;25;04;09 – 00;25;37;14
Unknown
You can of course be creative then as well when you try to get out of a difficult situation. And I worked as a journalist for so many years, so I was so stressed and I was also very creative trying to get out of this stressed, stressful situations all the time. I had that deadline continuously right. but what is, is that you’re not thinking outside the box, you’re creative, but you, you’re trapped in this box and you’re trying to get out of this difficult situation.

00;25;37;14 – 00;26;11;20
Unknown
Last year you were kind of locked to this specific situation, whereas when you’re in the person perfect mode, then you’re and non stressed to be stress can also be to be living, living with a trauma, to live with PTSD or, you know, be it’s a it’s kind of locking a lot of your creativity, really, and you lose your sleep when you’re stressed.

00;26;11;28 – 00;26;51;23
Unknown
You sleep have less sleep. Quality and sleep is one of the fundamental things for the brain to work in a good way. So the parasympathetic way of being is to be relaxed, to be free, to explore too. It’s the nervous system of friendship, sex, love, storytelling, music, laughter. When we laugh, we put ourselves into the parasympathetic mode. So that’s a way of us that our body ourselves is putting ourselves into the sympathetic mode.

00;26;51;25 – 00;27;16;19
Unknown
On the other hand, if we’re very stressed, you don’t laugh at that joke breath when I’m very stressed. Yeah, that’s right. Trying to full of kind of be funny and jokey. I don’t laugh at the jokes. I have to put myself into this calm state where you are free to daydream, where you easily go into this daydream mode that we talked about.

00;27;16;22 – 00;27;45;06
Unknown
And that is what you do when you do meditation or yoga. You’re laying the foundations for all of these good things to happen with you so you can take them in, Right, right, right. Because being a friend is to have the extra time for chit chat, right? And to have that extra trip. You cannot be very efficient when it comes to human relationships or when it comes to art, Right.

00;27;45;09 – 00;27;59;01
Unknown
When it comes to real art. You have to be brave to be brave. You have to be safe and secure in the stock. You have to have this. I always create this.

00;27;59;03 – 00;28;20;26
Unknown
It’s like a creative castle around myself. When I start with a book and I don’t talk to anyone that is very negative or critical to me at that point, because then I have to protect myself and my idea. So to be able to kind of explore an idea and be very playful with an idea, I have to be surrounded by good people.

00;28;20;29 – 00;28;49;05
Unknown
I have to be in the parasympathetic or both. I do a lot of yoga. I surround myself with good people. So now I come to this myth of the lonely creative genius, which is in fact bullshit. So we talking to young people about this myth and it’s so toxic, it’s ruining people’s lives. Believing in this myth that’s in their research shows that.

00;28;49;07 – 00;29;22;01
Unknown
And this is a study done on musicians Research shows that we believe in talented musicians, right? But when they ask musical teachers to point out their pupils that with become a professional musician, they always pointed at the most talented children right when they came back years. Some years later, they too, they they knew the answer, right? They could tell they became professional musicians and it wasn’t them.

00;29;22;03 – 00;29;58;21
Unknown
It was the talented ones. Yeah, it was the ones that just never gave in at always practiced that lay down all the hard work. Me, myself, I was. I was I will say I have a good voice and I was a talented singer, but I didn’t have the drive to do that. I always, always wanted to write. So I lay down all that hard work in writing and I just quit that, quit singing at that point when I was 22, and I never got back to that.

00;29;58;22 – 00;30;30;14
Unknown
Yeah, because I wanted to prioritize writing. Yeah, the drive, drive and work is much more important. Also, the kind of loneliness I remember about loneliness too. Yes. So I know a lot about loneliness, and it’s the most destructive force in my life. It will break you down. It will ruin your body even. It’s kind of the source of so much toxic stress, emotional stress that you get sick from it.

00;30;30;17 – 00;31;01;18
Unknown
That’s why researchers say that it’s more dangerous to be lonely than to smoke 15 cigarets a day. I’ve heard that. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And that is because this stress is so intense that it is the root of a lot of our the most dangerous illnesses like heart disease, cancer and all came in pieces, etc., etc.. So the lonely genius doesn’t exist, right?

00;31;01;18 – 00;31;32;18
Unknown
We have to be connected to others to create something. You have to be taken care of by others too. Or to me, I’m always writing to someone. Write. I have trust in people listening to me. And that’s the opposite of being lonely. Also, we believe that, or from romanticism onwards, we thought that or always related that men are more creative than women, which is bullshit.

00;31;32;18 – 00;32;22;06
Unknown
Also, I have to say the human species have survived because we are so different. We are so different. It’s so many different talents spread out in the human race. So we’re not dependent on just two strategies of living, male and female. We’re dependent on all these strategies. So living thousands of strategies like someone that know math and someone that can paint someone that can cook, you know, all these kind of all these different life strategies that we got is supposed to kind of fulfill each other right into this big tribe, very big and very strong tribe with a lot of kind of problem solving in different areas.

00;32;22;09 – 00;32;47;21
Unknown
So and it’s nothing that says that the female brain is different than the male brain in problem solving and getting ideas and stuff. But I have research showing that women are much more self-critical, which is natural since it I mean, just 100 years ago, I wouldn’t ever have become a writer, right? I mean, my great grandmother, she was in a farm.

00;32;47;21 – 00;33;22;06
Unknown
She had nine children, so she didn’t have an education. Yeah. So it’s much more new to be able to be expressing ourselves. Yeah. I also here in Norway, I wonder, too, if it’s a function of well, that dichotomy is a function of a couple of things. One is that I think men on average have more mental illness, so maybe that maybe the kind of eccentric artist types are are more typically men.

00;33;22;06 – 00;33;51;10
Unknown
The ones that, you know, cut off their ear and do those crazy things that get attention. And then also, you know, women historically have been burdened more with child care, which is a very pragmatic activity and didn’t have that, like you said, that freedom to to explore their creative side. So I think there’s maybe multiple, multiple factors. There is multiple factors.

00;33;51;10 – 00;34;27;21
Unknown
And I looked into also this kind of we also think of the creative person as kind of half mad. Kind of, yes. Because of being so focused and several of the artists, there’s no reason to try to become mentally ill to create something, to be depressed is certainly not the way to creativity. It’s the opposite of creativity. So depression is all art, is being depressed have also been less productive in the depressed depressive periods of their lives.

00;34;27;23 – 00;35;00;15
Unknown
The only, of course, schizophrenia have been very idealized and romanticized, but it’s only 2% of all people with that diagnosis that has ever made anything because psychosis is horrible. Horrible. Yeah. And we need to understand that. And the only illness, a mental illness that is kind of very heavily related to creative work is bipolar. So it’s the 40%.

00;35;00;18 – 00;35;35;06
Unknown
Now you’re 40 times as likely to be bipolar if you’re a poet than if you’re in the normal population. So that’s an overweight to that. And in the manic periods, you will be able to create much more. Of course. So there are several artists that is suffering from bipolar. But the other thing is that in the 19th century, a lot of the male artists were visiting brothels.

00;35;35;09 – 00;36;05;21
Unknown
So we have this kind of genius thinker called Mitra, and a lot of people say, okay, he died in a mental hospital because he was so brilliant. He lost his mind from it. But that wasn’t at all. He just he just had put his penis in the wrong place. Really. So. So syphilis in the third stage is. Yes, really mentally ill from that.

00;36;05;23 – 00;36;34;03
Unknown
So are you going with that? I figured it ended with syphilis. Yeah. And that from that we get this wrong impression that if you’re very, very brilliant, you have to get matched somehow. Yes, I can assure you. Just look at the case of Einstein. Yes, we can. All rest assured, we can all be as brilliant as people. You’re not insane.

00;36;34;06 – 00;36;51;19
Unknown
Do you enjoy books about science and nature as much as I do? They bring a lot of information together and help you learn about science and the natural world on a much deeper level than you just get from consuming news. Well, we’ve curated a great list of books over at our website. On a page we call the Reading Room.

00;36;51;22 – 00;37;14;04
Unknown
It also features the books of all the authors that we’ve had on this podcast. Any purchases made through the reading room help support our channel with no added cost to you. Check it out at science centric dot com or look for a link in the description below. I just I wanted to connect a couple of dots here that you that you brought up on the science side.

00;37;14;06 – 00;37;46;28
Unknown
So you mentioned executive function and you also mentioned executive function versus the the default mode network admin. You also mentioned the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic. Could you say that when you’re in a when you’re when you’re in the sympathetic mode of your nervous system, that your executive function is more active and vice versa, would you say parasympathetic your default mode network is more active?

00;37;46;28 – 00;38;28;08
Unknown
Yeah, it allows for more of the default mode network. If you’re in the parasympathetic they promote. Yeah, okay. You’re relaxed, you’re happy, you’re open to just Yeah. Explore ideas, test out things and stuff. Still, if you’re on the phone all the time. Yeah. If you go to a meditation class, I’m straight off. They’re just scrolling away. I think you lost lot of the beneficial effect you’re undoing what you what you did with yoga or meditation or music.

00;38;28;11 – 00;38;56;18
Unknown
Yeah, it’s a lot of ways to get into this relaxed kind of mode where you’re open to think it’s very good to swim or to cycle on the bicycle or to row like Mahler did when he got the idea. For one. Obviously this was rowing a boat. Actually, I was kind of really I just got hung up on this thing with water.

00;38;56;18 – 00;39;27;26
Unknown
What is it with water and present, Right. People are in the shower and they get all these like, Yes. Or ultimate Think ultimate. This Archimedes. Yeah. Archimedes. Who got this idea when he was in the bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse stark naked, screaming Erika and the It’s so many ideas that have been born next to water.

00;39;27;28 – 00;40;04;23
Unknown
I mean, a warm day, July 1862, that charge, the victim sat in a boat with three children. They didn’t have a knife, so they didn’t have anything really to detain them. And the children were screaming, please, please, Uncle Charles, tell us the story. And Charles told them a story. He published it under the name Lewis Carroll. It’s called Alice in Wonderland is one of the biggest successes in book history, translated to almost every language in the world.

00;40;04;25 – 00;40;35;26
Unknown
And that’s happened on the boat. And this happened when Charles Livingston didn’t want to write a huge bestseller that wasn’t in school. So I got really obsessed with that. And I found this research from Britain. It’s called Blue Health is a huge research project called Blue Health, and they gave 20,000 people an assignment. The math was to report where they were when they felt happy.

00;40;35;28 – 00;41;03;02
Unknown
So they had they I think they did it on their phones so they could and it was connected to location so they could make a kind of a map of happiness. And that map of happiness so that people were so exceedingly much happier by the seaside than anywhere else. So it was they could make a list of what makes us happy and that this which places makes us happy.

00;41;03;10 – 00;41;47;12
Unknown
And that is not the mall, it is the by the ocean and by there in the woods. And it’s in the parks and by folk fountains. Yeah. What they think, what researcher thinks is they what they are thinking is that when we are by the sea, we are going more easily into this peaceful mode, better. So happiness and parasympathetic some the parasympathetic network happiness and this default network is very much linked and is activated when we are close to nature, especially water.

00;41;47;15 – 00;42;34;23
Unknown
So meditation is good that the ocean is even better. Yeah. Yeah. One thought that I had and maybe this was something you were trying to get across in your book, and that’s why I. Maybe it’s not my thought. Maybe it’s your thought is the idea that creativity, it comes from you, but it can’t exist in a vacuum. Meaning if I just a monk sitting in the woods meditating all day, I probably wouldn’t be very creative as much as a modern 21st century person who is exposed to all of this culture and all of these things going on.

00;42;34;26 – 00;42;58;25
Unknown
So my thinking is, if you really want to be creative, it’s almost like you want a balance between these two dichotomies of a lot of input for your creativity to work on, but then moments of quiet and solitude or sitting by the ocean or sitting in walking in the forest, is that. Yeah. Would you say that’s a good thing?

00;42;58;28 – 00;43;22;14
Unknown
I would say that is very much what I’m thinking, that we have to have both. It’s all about balance, really. We also have to be in the sympathetic mode sometimes kind of in the network, because we have to finish things and we have to have the split into things. So it’s just different parts of the process and start.

00;43;22;14 – 00;43;48;04
Unknown
We have to protect ourselves from critics. In the end of the process, you have to have critics because you have to really start to massage your work and your text and everything and you have to have speed in the end, a much more executive function in the end than in this start. In the start, I’m kind of like I describe to you, I feel like I’m lost.

00;43;48;05 – 00;44;29;25
Unknown
I don’t say no to anything. I’m just exploring. I’m just wondering in the in the woods, without any plan, like anything out of the woods kind of. So it’s that you have to do both. It has to. And that sounds very wishy washy. But the thing is, if you know these things about the brain, how it works, how you can facilitate ideas by being calm and rest and being lost, if you know that you will start the creative process there, and then you can finish with being very stressed.

00;44;29;28 – 00;44;56;15
Unknown
Invite a lot of critics. Most people do that last bit in the start and then they stop themselves immediately. So it’s better to know these things and kind of try to work your own brain and kind of follow the natural course of the process rather than stopping yourself continuously. You’re so into the results in our culture. Yeah, we should.

00;44;56;15 – 00;45;35;15
Unknown
We start, all of us, and then we forget the, the joy of playing and the thrill of being lost. Right? If we’re only kind of focusing on that beautiful product. Yeah, I think. And you said you’ve worked as a journalist and I think a lot of consumption of news in particular tends to act, tends to create this critical societal voice that we’re supposed to be doing other than what we’re doing.

00;45;35;17 – 00;46;02;02
Unknown
We’re not keeping up. We’re, you know, this person who was very young became very successful. We’re comparing ourselves to that person, even though that person may be an anomaly. So we it seems like it pulls us out of that. Like you’re talking about that safe, creative mode. So it almost seems like you need to wall yourself off from that kind of content as well so that you’re not doing.

00;46;02;02 – 00;46;24;29
Unknown
And social media, of course, you know, where you’re not just comparing yourself to Mark Zuckerberg or whoever else, but or some fashion model. But you’re comparing yourself to someone you knew in high school or that has a bigger house than you are a bigger car. But that doesn’t seem that doesn’t seem like it lends itself to creativity. No.

00;46;25;02 – 00;46;49;21
Unknown
Yeah. It also it puts it makes you very lonely if you’re continuously comparing yourself to others. And what happens when we’re lonely? We’re just we’re just so super stressed. Yeah. It’s not a good feeling to be in a. Yeah. Research shows that just just to keep your phone on the table will rise The cortisol level in your blood.

00;46;49;24 – 00;47;27;24
Unknown
Yeah, right. Just that it’s close to you. So it just makes us very stressed and unhappy. If we’re going into social media with a vague feeling of loneliness, you you go out to the Internet after with a much stronger feeling of loneliness. When you compare yourself to others, it’s you against them. Yeah. When you when you think of yourself as just a very small part of a very big puzzle and we are all doing our individual thing, just making the same picture together, it feels much better.

00;47;27;24 – 00;47;52;17
Unknown
I have so many friends that are very successful writers. I have to always put this feeling aside of them being much more successful than me. Instead, we help each other so my successful writer friends and me, we read each other’s text and give each other feedback in a nice way, not in a competitive way. And that is so important.

00;47;52;17 – 00;48;26;09
Unknown
It’s so important for me as a writer. I would encourage everyone who’s into doing creative stuff to have a friend that can help you, that will listen to you and that you can test ideas with. Yeah, just support you emotionally. Yeah. Yeah, that’s I think that’s great advice. It’s something I realize as I get older that you need people and I think I think to some degree, you know we buy into that that like you said, it’s a myth of this creative genius.

00;48;26;11 – 00;48;48;29
Unknown
But often when you dig a little deeper into that person’s story, you find out they had a lot of great people around them helping them and bouncing ideas off of each other. And it’s like this story that we tell. Again, you know, it’s journalism. Journalism loves the stories of somebody who came from nothing and and rose from there, you know, from nothing to be the success by themselves, you know?

00;48;48;29 – 00;49;16;02
Unknown
And I think that’s probably not true. It’s not that all true. It’s impossible, actually. Thousands of people have to me just sitting here today, the people developing the vaccine for COVID or for, you know, for pneumonia or whatever it it’s thousands of people before me and time and now that all together have been holding me, you’re never alone.

00;49;16;06 – 00;49;42;25
Unknown
Yeah. Even The people going to the South Pole, you know, skiing to the South Pole are totally dependent on everyone making their stuff like they send their shoes and their skis or inventing skis or, you know, it’s a course of inventions that bring you to that point where it looks like you’re alone. But you were never alone. Yeah.

00;49;42;27 – 00;50;17;00
Unknown
One thing I wanted to ask you about is this idea of. So there’s definitely those those outside critics who you can you mentioned beginning of the creative process you want to separate yourself from. But we also have this inner critic and that’s something that meditation in particular is very good at bringing forth. It’s you become aware of that voice and this is one of the huge benefits of meditation as you become less a slave to that voice.

00;50;17;02 – 00;50;43;18
Unknown
But it’s there. And I think you mentioned in the book that this is actually a natural part of our development is to develop this inner critic. So what what role does the inner critic play in creativity? Is it is it positive or negative? And I think you did an experiment where you were able to shut that off. And what was that like?

00;50;43;20 – 00;51;23;20
Unknown
You mean where I got electricity? Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I went to University of Them to explore more about creativity. And there’s a few trees, the kind of environment for researching creativity. There. And this was part of a bigger study on several hundred students at the university where you get some very big, very weak electricity through the frontal and temporal lobe on the right side.

00;51;23;23 – 00;51;58;28
Unknown
And that kind of knocks out your temporal lobe, which is like the most active in blocking out all these irrelevant association ideas and random thoughts when we’re in the executive function. So to me, it’s clear now that the in the critic is and what I what happened when I got this low grade electricity through my brain, it wasn’t it wasn’t electroshock.

00;51;59;00 – 00;52;24;13
Unknown
It was like, you know, the cool treatment. It was just very vague. But I got kind of giggly and it felt like I’d been drinking a glass of wine. So I had a lot of ideas and I immediately wrote them down. And they were when when the effects were off, I could see that they were really silly. So there were a few ideas about this.

00;52;24;13 – 00;52;48;06
Unknown
Mostly the case when we drink glass of wine and we have this wonderful idea, or what happens also that people are waking up in the middle of the night. It happens in the Jerry Seinfeld episode, even that he wakes up in the middle of the night. I found the idea when they look something in the morning is just rubbish companies, anything.

00;52;48;08 – 00;53;21;12
Unknown
So it’s kind of you’re knocking down the temporal lobe and by that you’re knocking down that kind of this very efficient part of the executive function. So you’re not as efficient anymore. So it’s like you’re, it’s almost like ADHD in a way. So ADHD is to have kind of a bigger executive function, right? And that means that I’ve met a lot of people in the creative field that have this diagnosis, right?

00;53;21;12 – 00;53;51;27
Unknown
So you have access to a lot of ideas. So the problem then is to execute them. Yeah, with every executive function that is much more difficult. Your concentration is more difficult to control. So that was what they did. So to me it’s in this experiment that was what they did. They kind of it was like they were giving me a glass of wine and I got access to a lot of ideas.

00;53;51;27 – 00;54;19;20
Unknown
Research also shows that you can use the wine to knock down your temporal lobe and get access to more of this idea, I guess, from the default mode network. But of course, the faster this works at the glass of wine, the faster it works in your brain. And you would think that is positive, the faster them it’s more predictive for you developing alcoholism.

00;54;19;24 – 00;54;51;22
Unknown
Yeah. And you take the next class and you take the next class and no research can support that. And they kind of drug or alcohol abuse is good for creativity. Interesting. So I looked into that as well. And the research shows that a lot of creative people didn’t start off as alcoholics. They ended up as alcoholics. So it wasn’t what helped them create their career.

00;54;51;22 – 00;55;19;12
Unknown
It was something that they use to kind of ease their their own demons and their own fears, like Bukowski. I love Borkowski. He’s one of my favorite writers. It was a heavy drinker, but he was also kind of very much abused by his parents. They were very abusive parents, so he had a lot of. Did you say did you say Charles Bukowski?

00;55;19;14 – 00;55;48;11
Unknown
Yes. Okay. I know that’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was a pretty lonely man. And alcohol can soothe strong emotional pain, of course, and kind of to kind of smooth all kind of social anxiety right there in the short term. Yes So alcohol and drug, I cannot say that that will help you. It’s also part of the artist myth, but it helps in a short term.

00;55;48;11 – 00;56;17;16
Unknown
It can help you knock down this overly focused part of the brain that makes you kind of stuck your ideas, which is the executive function. That is one part of the in a crisis. But the other part is very much related to the research I looked at just now. When I finished my I just finished my book on loneliness, and in this book I examined how important other people are to us.

00;56;17;19 – 00;56;54;26
Unknown
So it starts when we are five and or five or six years old, five, six, seven years old. It starts to become even more important than before. What other people are thinking about us outside our own homes, Of course, because our parents are the first parameter to us. But if you are if you’re having a very, very supportive and nice parents still, you will be starting to become much more critic of yourself and you’re putting faith into what your teacher is saying and your classmates are saying about yourself.

00;56;54;28 – 00;57;28;08
Unknown
Yeah. So we’re starting to internalize what other people’s people are telling us about us. So this is part of the loneliness research, and that is that if we’re feeling that, we’re going to be ostracized from our group of people or folk or tribe, then we will do as much as we can to fit in. The more the more we peer these Austria system ostracism.

00;57;28;08 – 00;57;53;08
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The more referrals, the more we will try to get back into the group. And by that we try to be as normal as possible and we try remove everything that is important when we’re doing some creative work, which is to be quirky and find their own voice. We’ll try to, we will try to suppress our own voice as much as possible.

00;57;53;11 – 00;58;21;02
Unknown
So that is also a lot of the things we’re doing in this and network, this default mode network. We’re thinking about our place in the world or place in our group, and we’re doing a lot of interpretation of other other people’s perception of us to try to avoid being thrown out of the group as children. They’re very, very vulnerable.

00;58;21;04 – 00;58;52;20
Unknown
Yeah. And we need others to to survive at all. Yes, right. But all of us do. We all do. So there are from my research, it’s very clear that there are children that are more easily bullied at school, bullied by other children. And those are it’s a lot of research now showing the weight of racism on people, how it kind of eats from inside.

00;58;52;20 – 00;59;32;14
Unknown
It has a lot of kind of physical it does a lot to our bodies to feel ostracized. Like if you’re experiencing racism, if you’re living with disabilities, you are much more to violence and to bullying. If you’re subjected to violence at home, you’re more subjected to violence by your classmates. So it’s a lot of this became very clear to me in that in working with loneliness, that there are children that grow up with a much stronger in the critique than others just from this fact.

00;59;32;21 – 01;00;05;19
Unknown
Yeah, just from structural racism and discrimination and violence and bullying. Yeah, right. So that that voice will speak. You speak very loud in your mind and that is, of course, you’re internalizing to avoid this happening to you ever again. Right. If you’re being bullied. Yeah. You need to know that it will never happen again. Internalize all these critical comments and they’re very easily accessible to you so that it will stop.

01;00;05;19 – 01;00;38;28
Unknown
You’re creating work, right? I was thinking that also with I, I imagine that poverty also has this effect as well. That of course, I was going to ask you if creativity was it’s it’s something that’s more for affluent people because they don’t have to always be thinking about where their next meal is coming from or where they’re going to sleep or Yeah, and you’re you’re able to disengage that executive function where if you have affluence versus people who are I think those are I think those are probably connected together.

01;00;39;00 – 01;01;09;00
Unknown
Yes, of course. It’s very true. And of course, that is part of the problem with my great grandmother living in a very poor farm, just having a lot of children. You’re very busy with that. You’re also just very worried You don’t have the extra time or extra energy to do anything else than survive. Yeah, but even so, even if you plan in poverty, you will always try to find beautiful things.

01;01;09;03 – 01;01;45;02
Unknown
You will always try to solve problems. And my great grandmother did creative work like nothing or embroidery. And these have been kind of the poor women’s outlet of creativity. And of course, people can rise from poverty and still be able to be creative. Nothing is set in stone. Charles Dickens grew up with a violent stepfather, and he was put in a factory shoeshine factory when he was 12 because they had the bankruptcy in his family.

01;01;45;05 – 01;02;34;00
Unknown
So and still he became one of the most famous writers of all time, full of imagination. So it’s not nothing is set in stone. But we shouldn’t underestimate all of these factors when it comes to creativity. We’re talking about creativity like it’s for a kind of to express ourselves that everyone, like everyone can do that. But there’s a lot of groups in our society that will naturally silence themselves, or if you are gay or have a different gender identity, you will always be you will have been subjected to so much violence and so much bullying that you will probably silence yourself long before you have even been able to meet an outward, quick critique.

01;02;34;01 – 01;02;58;09
Unknown
Right? Right. Well, that is not that is not the happiest thought. So I thought, should we stop on the happiest? Let’s stop on. Let’s stop on a happier thought. And and the reason I wanted to talk to you and have you on the podcast was I was thinking it’d be a great topic for the beginning of the new year.

01;02;58;11 – 01;03;21;03
Unknown
So what I wanted to end with was if you could just say what it would be like, you’re, you’re maybe 3 to 5 things that someone could do for 2024 that would that would make them more creative for the new year. Because I think I think people would like to know that and I would like to know that as well.

01;03;21;06 – 01;03;45;16
Unknown
And I should say, besides reading your book, because that has a keys, all of the keys to creativity in it. But if you were to distill it down, what would you say? Do you work for a science or technology focused organization and would like to create video content but don’t know where to start? Well, my company, Flensburg Media, the publisher of this podcast, can help you.

01;03;45;17 – 01;04;18;04
Unknown
We are a one stop shop that can provide content, strategy, video production, and even social media management at our previous clients include educational institutions, academic publishers, trade organizations and aerospace companies. These are innovative, world changing organizations, and we’re leading humanity toward a brighter future. Learn more flow CYBERCOM or look for the link in the description below. First of all, and this is something I’m working on, and I will do this much more in 2024.

01;04;18;06 – 01;05;08;25
Unknown
Turn off your phone and put it away. And how can a specific hours when you answer your email or, you know, are active on social media, but just as little as possible? So that is my goal for 2020 for it to be very much. And look, also, if you want to take care of your brain and in the best possible manner, it’s very few things you can do that are very efficient asleep properly, like seven, 8 hours every night if you’re an adult and eat a half healthy, not to say something, don’t overdo it and move, move for 30 minutes every day.

01;05;08;28 – 01;05;40;02
Unknown
And that is general tip that every GP will tell you is things are good generally for your health and your brain is part of your body. So you do the same for the brain and you will be very fine. For me, it’s also doing something half boring that is kind of in silence. That gives me the time to think long thoughts, which is I go for a walk in the woods.

01;05;40;02 – 01;06;12;12
Unknown
That’s part of my work, I think. So when I go for a walk in the woods, it’s part of my work. So right through I go there and I don’t have a plan to solve any specific problems in my work, but I always sell something during that work, or I do yoga or I swim or ice painting. These are things that will kind of make you happier, make you more able to solve problems and create problems that you can solve yourself.

01;06;12;16 – 01;06;37;05
Unknown
And also, I say this to youth and they look at me like I’m crazy. I tell them, You can conquer the world if you can read a book, but if you read books, you can learn something. You kind of you get into deep learning. To just crush something on your phone will not give you deep learning, right? To read a book.

01;06;37;05 – 01;07;13;17
Unknown
If you walk through a whole topic guided by a writer. And that is something that gives you kind of more insight into this world. So the more you beat, the more material you will have to think around something that will expand your world. It will make you conquer the world. Great. Those are great. Yeah. And actually, I have to tell you personally, reading your book made me realize why I like doing this podcast, because it forces me to read books that maybe I wouldn’t have read.

01;07;13;19 – 01;07;48;06
Unknown
You wouldn’t have picked up immediately. And then I get to interact with the authors of the books as well, and that’s fuel for my creativity. So, yeah, you know, and I was just going to say that I don’t I think ice skating sounds like a very Scandinavian activity. I don’t know if you will become happier jumping. Great. And also the kind of last thing, just don’t be so productive.

01;07;48;13 – 01;08;14;29
Unknown
Just don’t try too hard to do something. Just allow yourself to get lost and to play with things and to be open as open as possible. Just taking in a lot of impulses. Yeah, I think. I think that’s it. I’m with a friend, of course. Friends. Yeah. I think celebrate friendship. I think that’s a great another great takeaway.

01;08;14;29 – 01;08;45;15
Unknown
It’s just that we often think of our work as we have to be sitting at our computer, typing, doing something. But sometimes our work is away from our computer, sometimes our work is daydreaming. And and I mean, that’s something I took away from your book as well. So anyways, Hilda, it’s been awesome speaking with you. And I think it just a great way to start the new year and for people that want to follow your work, where can they find you online?

01;08;45;15 – 01;09;11;12
Unknown
Are you on any of the social media platforms or? Do you have a website trying not to be trying not to be at all, But I got a Facebook profile and a closed Instagram profile. I try not to be stuck ever website. Do you have a website? Yeah, I love it, but it’s cold. But for hilda. Okay. Internet.

01;09;11;14 – 01;09;31;08
Unknown
okay. Well, we’ll put a link to that because I don’t know if that people are going to be able to pick that pick that up. No, they come. They’re not they’re not Norwegian. So. Okay, well, it’s been great talking to you. And I look forward to your your next book on loneliness. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.

01;09;31;08 – 01;09;49;28
Unknown
It was so nice talking to you. Well, that’s it for this show. And as always, I hope you’ve learned as much as I did. If you enjoyed this episode, you should definitely check out our previous conversation with neuroscientist Henning back on how to use your brain. Until next time. I’m Eric Olson.