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A Conversation on Creativity with my 9-Year Old Son Ben · The Daily Writer

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Normally on Thursdays, I release a guest interview, and this week is no different, except that this time the guest is my son Ben from 2013.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the other day I was poking around on my computer and looking at some old podcast files, and I came across this interview that I had done with him in 2013 when he was nine years old.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he was a guest on an episode of a show that I did called The Artist's Suitcase.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually have a book by the same title of that.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the Artist Suitcase podcast was all about the creative journey.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he came on the show and did about 10 minutes, and he talked about creativity from a nine-year-old's perspective.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I had totally forgotten about this interview until I came across it just a couple days ago.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so much fun.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was like getting into a DeLorean and having a little hop back in time a few years.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought I'd post it here because this is a really fun interview, and I think that you'll enjoy it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, today on the Artist Suitcase, we have a special treat.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to do a mini interview with my son Ben.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: He is eight years old, and I thought it would be fun to have him on for a couple reasons.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, because he's just kind of a cool kid, and he has a lot of cool stuff to say.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And second of all, because this is a podcast about art and creativity and design and you know just the wonder of life and enjoying life around us.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: He has a lot of great talent in that area.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ben is a great Lego designer, actually, and even at eight years old, he comes up with some pretty cool things.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought it would be fun to have a kid, specifically him, because he's good with this area, to share with us the to share with us a little bit about his perspective on designing things and creativity and fun and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, Ben, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hi.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, anything that you want to say to everybody to start out with?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Anything on your mind today?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, we were thinking about talking about Legos.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, Legos, if you don't know what Legos are, there's these little things that you can put together to make big things.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we really want to talk about today is Legos and building.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And like being an artist.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe we'll touch on Minecraft also at the end.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we've had a little practice already because dad forgot to hit the right button on the recorder, and this is our second take, so we should be really good by now, shouldn't we?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Third take.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Third take.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to give myself a little edge there.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully we don't have a fourth.
• 2:28
  unknown: Okay.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's true.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so here's my first question for you is you mentioned something earlier when we were talking about this part of the podcast about ways of having fun.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: So can you elaborate on that and what you meant by different ways of having fun?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to scoot up to the mic a little bit so everybody can hear you really good.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, to an adult, fun is math, schools, learning, basically boring stuff like that.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But to a kid, it's watching TV, playing video games, you know, doing experiments.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the main thing is basically building up your imagination.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't think learning can be fun?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, if you have two chocolate chip cookies and somebody gets it right and then you get it, well, that's fun.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, chocolate chip cookies make everything fun.
• 3:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been in a place where you thought that learning something was really fun?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can you think of what that might have been or what happened or anything like that?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um we didn't talk about this question, did we?
• 3:35
  unknown: No.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just putting on this part.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I remember on Friday.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I remember on Friday we were learning about history and we were doing the thing about England and the declaration of independence and stuff.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So she kinda talked um our my teacher, Mrs.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Campbell, kinda talked about that.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were kind of learning about that, and then we were doing some stuff and we learned about some monuments, and I thought, hey, history is fun.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: History is fun.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Mrs.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Campbell must be doing a pretty good job for you to because you were telling us all about the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, and I was kind of impressed about that.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was pretty awesome.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk about Legos a little bit.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So here's why I wanted to talk about Legos is because you are the most creative person that I know of when it comes to building things and Legos and designing things.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I am really impressed with all the cool stuff that you build.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So would you rather have a brand new Lego set like a Star Wars kit or something like that, where all the instructions are laid out, or would you rather have a like just a whole bunch of Legos and you pick what you want and you design your own thing?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I would go with the second one, but the pieces would have to be like sorted in groups, so I could find the like right pieces.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if I were to build a Lego set with every single piece I had, they would have to be separate, like in different places.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well you're pretty good at designing things from scratch.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty funny.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's the favorite Lego set that you built ever?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, probably the Harry Potter school with like the lunchroom and that one was pretty cool.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: I like the big castle that we built.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of fun.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: This was the big castle?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Was it Hogwarts School?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was my favorite.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you got that for Christmas, right?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody got it for you for Christmas, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that video we took when we had Dolly and I was like making that, and Dolly was like, hmm?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's actually go into a different topic.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about a game that you like to play called Minecraft.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, for people who don't know, can you explain what Minecraft is and why you like it so much?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, it's basically you start out, you pick a world, and you start out, there's two Minecrafts, Minecraft P E and Minecraft P.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: E.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Light.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm talking about Minecraft P.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: E.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you start out in this cle clear um world, and it's like just grass, water, sand, gravel, trees.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's just like the plain hillsides or something.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's cloud and stuff.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, you have all these bricks, arrows, gravel, wood.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: All these bricks and stuff, and you get to build whatever you want.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've built like a whole village, and I'm going like outside to try to build more things.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: How many buildings do you think that you've built in your world?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, maybe like twenty, thirty.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say twenty or thirty, probably, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Which is like several houses, you have different stores, you have like castles and the coolest part of those is all the secret tunnels and passageways that you put in your buildings, which is pretty cool.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Man cave.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta have a man cave.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's got a man cave, of course.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, well, that's pretty awesome.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've had a lot of fun kind of joining your world and getting to run around in your world through uh when we play it together.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this, by the way, it's is it called Minecraft PE?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Pocket edition?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then there's Minecraft P.E.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Lite.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: PE Light.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So Light is the free version, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't get that many bricks.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Minecraft PE is it's this is an app for your phone or iPad or device or something.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But let me warn you, you gotta have$7 or more.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: You do have to have$7.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was$6.99.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was one of the most expensive apps I've ever bought.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Remember you bought that$10 one?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Which one was that?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the most expensive one that I bought was I think$14.99.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was one that you can open up documents on it and stuff, so that was expensive.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So do you think it was worth$6.99?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, the way I look at it, it's uh a lot cheaper than buying like a PlayStation 3 or something like that, so.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Which I'm excited about maybe getting a Wii system here before too long.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of games, before we close, if all you people don't know about Sly, I did Sly 1, 2, and 3 and 4 coming out.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Sly is basically a game where there's a raccoon, a hippo, and a turtle.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you get go through all these levels.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically one big game, and there's levels that you can play.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: You have to complete this, and I don't have time to talk about all three and what happens, so it's actually a really cool game.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Ben, thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: You are the youngest guest that we've had so far.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So come here, bud.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I love ya.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being on my guest.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: You did an awesome job.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're welcome and thank you.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we are signing off on this interview.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.