Episode 62: The Neuroscience of Creativity with Dr. Indre Viskontas

Dr. Indre Viskontas is a woman of many talents: an opera singer and director, a neuroscientist, a professor, host of the Inquiring Minds podcast (and several others), and the current president of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity. She bridges the worlds of music, performance, neuroscience, and education, sharing her academic insights with the wider world through public speaking, including a TED Talk, her book, titled How Music Can Make You Better, and her podcasts. Our conversation explores Indre’s current research, as well as her own creative process, how she’s teaching her own kids about creativity, and more.

For our Creativity Pro-Tip, if you’re feeling stuck, whether it’s a creative project or business presentation, try introducing a plot twist. This is a narrative and storytelling device where instead of telling a story chronologically, you introduce a “but” or “therefore” to create interest or suspense, thus keeping your audience more engaged. 

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 9: Music and Psychology: "The Pocket" Experience with Dr. Jeff Mims, Episode 25: Creativity, Neuroscience, and Psychedelics with Bradley Cooke, PhD, and Episode 48: Can You Learn Creativity? with Creative Director Chris McKenna

At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review! We’d love to hear your feedback as well, so drop us a line at info@syncreate.org. 

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Dr. Indre Viskontas’ Website

Inquiring Minds Podcast

Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity

YouTube Video Clip: “But” & “Therefore” with Matt Stone & Trey Parker

Show / permanent hyperlinks: 

The Syncreate Podcast

Syncreate Website

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Syncreate YouTube

Transcript

Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. Our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. We talk with visionaries and changemakers and everyday creatives working in a wide range of fields and mediums, from the arts to science, technology and business.

We aim to illuminate the creative process, from imagination to innovation and everything in between. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their dreams and visions to life. At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture and you're not quite sure how to get it off the ground, reach out to us at syncreate.org.

Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. And we'll be offering a monthly creativity coaching group in 2025. So check that out on our website as well.

So before we get going today, I really want to invite you, our listeners, our audience, to reach out to us. I'd love to hear your feedback on the show. Maybe, what you'd like to see more of, what maybe we could do differently? Topics or guests that you might be interested in seeing featured on the show.

So again, you can reach out at info@syncreate.org. We'd love to hear from you. 

So our guest today on the podcast is Doctor Indre Viskontas, "Doctor Dre," as she's affectionately referred to by her students. She's a neuroscientist and opera singer, as well as an opera director. She's a professor of psychology, the current president of the Society for Neuroscience of Creativity. She's also an author of a book called How Music Can Make You Better and a prolific scholarly author as well. And she's been involved with four podcasts. Yes, she's very prolific, including the very popular Inquiring Minds, which looks at science and society.

So welcome Indre, or Doctor Dre, as your students affectionately refer to you. I'm so happy to have you on the Syncreate podcast today. 

Indre: Thank you. It's great to be here. 

Melinda: Yeah, absolutely. And I heard you speak at the Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University back in May and was just really inspired. I, you know, related to you and your work, having also trained as a classical singer and, you know, a psychology professor and so on.

And so I love to see how you're kind of bridging these worlds of music and neuroscience. And I've been listening to some of your Inquiring Minds episodes recently. And I'm curious kind of to start us off like, what is the most surprising thing that you've learned in your research on the creativity, you know, the neuroscience of creativity and music?

Indre: Yeah. I mean, I think that, well, actually probably the most surprising is actually less related to music, although music has a factor and it's more about general creativity. And I think the most surprising thing is that there are times where we really need to use, like, our frontal executive control networks in the creative process, and there are times when we absolutely need to let that kind of driving of our thinking go.

And I think what’s sort of interesting now in the neuroscience of looking at people who are expert creatives, especially musicians who improvise, is that they learn to actively switch between the networks that drive those two types of thinking, and they actually have more connectivity between the sort of frontal executive control networks and what we call the default mode network, which is kind of the imagination, mind wandering network.

We used to think that, you know, it was like, well, no, they just could shut the frontal cortex off and they could just dream, etc. and, you know, improvise. And that's, it was all driven by, you know, the muse or, you know, I think, as neuroscientists would call it, as those, you know, those networks in your brain that are not so deliberately tied to your conscious experience, in terms of driving the thinking.

But now I think we're learning that, well, in fact, with expertise, you can learn to sort of toggle between these two states more effectively. And the main network that drives that toggling is your emotional network, is essentially through emotion, through feeling through, you know, that that kind of welling up of even physiologic sensation with something, being moved by something that's actually a way of also moving your brain into these different states.

Melinda: I love that. And at Syncreate, we talk a lot about that toggling between sort of convergent and divergent thinking. And so for people who are kind of, you know, in the midst of creative process, like how can they kind of, make that switch, like, do you have any tips for how? You mentioned the emotions? 

Indre: Yeah. I mean, that's a big, so using music strategically, I mean, that's something that a lot of my work now is looking into, is I think of music as a Swiss army knife, not a sledgehammer. And by that I mean you need like, the right instrument for the right task. You can't just always use music in the exact same way and expect that you're going to get, you know, a great result. 

And so I think that you can use music to help you get that, you know, arousal, that motivation, that kind of just mood boost that a lot of that creative thinking requires. People have this misconception, I'm sure you've talked about it on your podcast that, you know, it's the people who are in the, like, lowest of the lows and these depressive states that are highly creative.

And it's actually even in those cases where you have someone with, like, you know, major depression who's like, creative, they tend to have their best ideas when they're coming out of that state. So I think that that's, you know, that's part of it is, and I think sometimes because we tie so much of our identity and how we value ourselves to our ability to be creative or to the creative product that we're producing.

I think sometimes that can, the frustration of being in the state of being blocked, can really lead to a lot of negative emotion. And so anything that you can do to remind yourself that the next stage after being in a block is an aha moment. I love that it's like, you know, you have to get stuck in order to get unstuck and find a new idea.

So that's part of it is like trying to reframe that and then finding ways to get that mood boost. In my own creative work, I'm very clear on like, I'm like, I have an analog calendar that, like, you know, has everything scheduled, I love schedules, I'm flexible, I can, I have a whole bunch of, you know, pens that, are erasable.

But I'm really, you know, I want to put it on the schedule, and I want to know, because I have to build into my day times where I can't be sitting at my desk, because that's not where I'm going to be the most creative. I have to be walking in a park or going for a run or swimming, or like doing something that has some amount of activity and some amount of exposure to nature that allows me to sort of separate from that fixated, frontal-driven thinking and get to some of the, let the either ideas bubble up into consciousness. 

Melinda: Yeah. And we often refer to that as kind of the incubation process. Right. When we kind of step away from the task at hand, and then the ideas can kind of flow. So do you have some favorite jams or favorite pieces of music that inspire you in those moments? 

Indre: So honestly, when I listen to music, it's when I need to focus. So I have like, you know, I have a whole bunch of playlists that are like my work playlists. And they range from, you know, opera’s greatest hits.

But I'm very, I have a lot of opinions about what those actually are. So it has to be the right album with the right performers. I have, you know, Snoop Dogg is like, when I really just need to get back, you know, to my youth and get inspired and sort of like, you know, get that feeling of nostalgia and a little bit of grit and kind of edge.

I listen to a lot of U2, because that's just, you know, where my soul lives as a teenager and then, you know, so I have all these different plays, a lot of Sarah McLaughlin, cause I'm Canadian, Sinéad O'Connor because she was amazing. But I don't actually use them in the incubation period.

In the incubation period, I tend to listen to podcasts or, like mainly talk shows, but podcast form, so, and ones that, yeah, there's this really funny, one of my favorite podcasts is called Heavyweight. It's Jonathan Goldstein, who's also Canadian. And he has this one episode where he's talking to someone who really does not like his style of podcasting, and he calls it the chit-chat show, so, I like chit-chat shows, because I feel like I'm in a cafe and I'm kind of overhearing a conversation, but I don't have to listen so closely because I'm not participating in it. 

And for me, that really works well. I know for a lot of people that would not work well. So I think it's really important to recognize that your choices of what gets you into that state, first of all, are personal, but they're also built on through experience.

So, you can, you know, you can change what it is that gets you into that incubation stage with practice. It might be that the first couple times it really doesn't work for you, but eventually when it starts to become a habit, I actually learned this during the pandemic when, you know, there wasn't a lot to do. And I remember the first, you know, in the first few months of the pandemic, you know, all the gyms were closed, everything was closed.

And so I would just go for like really long walks or, you know, and I would pick a new route every time. And that did not work for me because I had to spend too much time making decisions. Well, where am I going to go? How long am I going to go? Am I going to turn left now?

Am I going to go do this? So it wasn't productive time. And then I just found this one route where I run and it's like, you know, a slow downhill to the ocean. So it's like not particularly, you know, taxing. But I do that like three times a week now and it's clockwork and I know exactly.

So I don't have to think about the route. I don't have to think about whether or not I can make it. I know I can make it. I've done it 100 times. And so then I can just listen to a chit-chat show and, you know, with my notes app open on my phone, I like tend to just, the ideas just start to come.

I start to pull together all these things as I'm letting my mind kind of just go. 

Melinda: That's fascinating because you're right. You know, we can try to understand as much as we can about the creative process. And then at some level, everyone's process is a little different. What works for you might not work for me or another person, right?

So we kind of have to discover like what really, you know, gets us into that focus mode versus that incubation mode. Yeah. So you mentioned your calendar earlier and this was kind of something I was curious to talk to you about. And people ask me all the time because I do all these different things, like how do you do everything you do? 

And I'm kind of like, well, I'm not really sure, but my mantra is kind of like, I can do everything, just not all at the same time. So, you know, you're a researcher, a singer, a director, a podcaster, an author. How do you balance all of that? 

Indre: Yeah. You know, I was the same way, like all throughout my career, people have said, well, at some point you're going to have to choose.

And I would just be like, okay, well, when that point comes, I'll choose. But it hasn’t come yet! And the way I seem to be able to manage it, first of all, is very long term planning. So, and being very kind of, like, I'm a scrooge with my time when it's not in the right bucket.

I'm kind of project-based. So when I have a big project on, like, especially if I'm directing, well, then I know I need to block off, you know, the prep time. And that might be, you know, there might be little pockets where we need to do more intensive work. But mainly it's like over the course of a few months, you know, that will be kind of.

But then when I'm, when we're in the theater for those, you know, 3 or 4 weeks or however long it is, like that really, everything else has to be set aside except, you know, the odd day where I can catch up on email or something. But then I only do that, you know, once a year or so.

Recently, maybe even less. So it doesn't, so that means that that allows me to do all the other things. But then with my other projects, there are like, I know how I need to schedule my day, and if there's just a day where there's too many zoom calls and not enough incubation time or deep work time, I just say I don't have any more time.

And people say, well, you know, what about, no, I don't have it. And so I protect those times where I have to do the deep work because it's really easy to give them up to more meetings or more whatever. But the truth is, is that you're really not going to be good at what it is that you're trying to do.

Like, if your job especially has some creative component to it, you're not doing your job if you're sitting in zoom calls all day long. 

Melinda: Exactly. 

Indre: So that's, you know, so I'm really kind of, yeah. And what I found is that if somebody really wants you to do the thing that they're asking you to do and it's not urgent, they will wait and you can like, you know, it can be ridiculous.

It can be like, okay, well contact me in six months. And if it's really important, they will. And if it's not that important, they won't. And then you're not out anything because it's not that important. 

Melinda: Right? Right. Exactly. 

Indre: Right. So I think, you know, I think that's been my strategy, is like, making sure that I am very clear on a week-to-week basis that I have the time that I need to, you know, finish those projects. I used to over schedule.

And now I realize, like at the end of the week on Friday afternoons, I have to catch up on emails, I have to do all that little stuff. So I have to protect that time. And, you know, and so those are the kinds of decisions that I have to make on a day to day basis that then allows me to be productive in many different spheres. 

Melinda: Yeah, I love that because, you know, indeed, it's so easy to kind of let the, urgent overtake the important. Right, as they say, and to overscheduled ourselves or to not block off time, you know, for the ideation and all of that. So that's so important. So one of the many projects that you're engaged in at the moment is that you are the current president of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity. So tell us a little bit more about that. You have a conference coming up in the new year?

Indre: Yeah. That's right. So it's really exciting. So this society is about ten years old. And if you look at the, if you plot the number of publications that have ‘creativity and brain’ or ‘creativity and neuroscience’ in them over time, there was really like very, very, very little, almost nothing until the society was formed about ten years ago.

And all of a sudden there's like this hockey stick or exponential curve. I'm Canadian so we use hockey stick. You know. So there's been this exponential growth in interest and research on, you know, how the brain supports different elements of creativity. And I've been on the executive committee of this society for a number of years. I was their digital curator director.

And then I was president-elect. And one of my goals with the society is to help bridge the silos between researchers and other professional creatives, so artists and, etc.. And so, I'm working in a number of different ways to sort of make those bridges happen, but also to not only inform the general public of what we already know, but find ways to really apply it in a useful manner.

And I'm going to give you one example that came out of the society that I'm really proud of. This wasn't, you know, entirely my work. This actually, this mainly happened, under the leadership of other presidents. But, there was one conference that we got some funding from the US government to bring in educators to our conference.

And, they came and we, you know, they watched all of our presentations on the neuroscience of creativity. And they were very polite. And they said, well, that's really great. And then, we all went to the social hour. And, you know, one of the educators said, look, this is all really great, but I'm never, it's not going to change what I do in the classroom.

And we were like, what? But why? We showed you all these graphs, and all these great data. And he said, because it's not going to get my kids into college. The parents therefore aren't going to care. My principal is not going to care. It's not going to help the kids do better on the tests on which my work is evaluated.

So then we, that was very sobering. And then we started to think about like, okay, a lot of people pay lip service to the importance of creativity. You ask employers if it's important. They say it's very important. You ask people if it’s important, very important. But in truth, we don't value it in the same ways that we value other kinds of skills, like rote memorization or determination or etc..

So one of the things that the society decided to do, it took us a number of years and we're still in the process of doing this, but now finally, we're seeing some fruits of our labor, and we actually have, like now, a $2 million grant from the NSF to move this work forward. We decided to figure out ways to automate the scoring of creativity in people's essays.

And so most colleges require application essays, and, hopefully most students use them not using GPT too much. And we wondered like whether we could, you know, figure out how to score these essays for different elements of creativity and whether that was predictive of success in college. And it turns out that we know that actually, creativity measures are both highly predictive of success in college and in the future workforce.

They're also much less discriminatory, and much less dependent on social economic status and other discriminatory potential variables. That compared to like the SAT, for example, which is a very commonly used tool to assess a student's ability to perform in college. And sure enough, we found that, we've created a model that that now actually does it very well.

And, we're really proud of this. And so now we can go back to the educators, because there are a couple of universities that are starting to apply this model to their applications process. And, we can say to the educators, you know what? Creativity is going to get your kids into college, because that's going to be something that, you know, the universities are going to be looking for.

And so that's why you should, you know, teach. And so that kind of trickle-down effect, I think is something that we're thinking, you know, very deeply about. And there are a number of other of those kinds of implications. But that's what I'm most excited about now in terms of taking the work of the researchers that are within the society to this greater level, because we're coming on to a huge disruption in the workforce in the next 12 or 18 months.

As you know, so many, of the current tasks get automated. And that should be great news. But for a lot of people, it's going to be challenging and there's going to be a lot of disruption. And so what we want to really lean into is that, look, people who are studying creativity and can help you not only value it and evaluate it, but also teach you to be more creative.

All of a sudden that, you know, we think like, that's really, you know, this becomes something that is not just a nice to have, but, you know, potentially have a lot of really positive consequences. So. 

Melinda: Yeah, so important, like, teaching creativity because we also know from a lot of research that traditionally our kind of education system has stifled rather than supported creativity. Right. So I love that you're…

Indre: We’re teaching to the test. Yes. Exactly. Right. And yeah. That's right. 

Melinda: Yeah. So and I know that you have a neuroscience lab and you're involved with a number of different projects with that, including a lot of emphasis on education. And, I was listening to a recent episode that you guested on talking about, in particular, you know, I see you as kind of a feminist.

I don't know if you see yourself that way, but really elevating, you know, kind of women and girls and you were sort of talking about addressing the leadership gap of, you know, women leading organizations and things like that. So tell us about that. Does that feel like a priority for you? 

Indre: I mean, absolutely, you know, and I just watched On the Basis of Sex, the film on Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And it just underscores so many ways that, you know, there are still a lot of roadblocks that, you know, people who identify as women face in the world, although there have been a ton of strides. And of course, you know, there, anyway. But one of the things that we have been monitoring in our lab is that there is a kind of anxiety that is specific to being creative.

So people might be familiar with math anxiety, you know, some kids especially just get really anxious when they're asked to do math. It turns out that there is a similar, sort of specific type of anxiety that is related to generating ideas on the fly, being asked to be creative in the moment. And we find that this type of creative anxiety is more common in people who identify as women.

And when we looked at the performance of people who, you know, the entire sample, we found that it, there was a correlation between the amount of anxiety a person felt and how many ideas they generated on the alternate uses task, which is how many uses can you think of for a paperclip? Very common creativity measure and this was true in women, so particularly. So the originality, the rate of originality of their ideas did not differ and didn't seem to be related to the amount of anxiety they felt.

So they have great ideas. They just don't say as many of them. And we can't say for sure that this is because they don't have as many of them. But I suspect that there's some self-censorship that's happening. And instead, they're just not putting out the ideas that are not that creative just to get them out. And the way that this translates to the boardroom is that if you have, if you're the kind of person that only speaks up when you have that one really brilliant idea, there are going to be lots of times where, you know, someone else is going to step in and speak, and you're not going to be heard.

And I think when it comes to a lot of these leadership positions, speaking up first is actually one of the ways in which you gain these leadership positions. So if that's a barrier that is causing at least some women to stay silent and therefore be overlooked, I think that's one that's actually pretty easy for us to overcome.

Like because, so that’s another thing now in our lab we're looking at different interventions of, you know, if we tell someone, if we can just give them a scenario and tell them, look, you know, there's no difference in creativity between X and Y or, you know, if we kind of educate them that creativity is something that everyone can learn, you know, to do better and etc. and that, you know, oftentimes creativity is directly related to the number of ideas, not just the quality of the idea.

Maybe we can move this around a little bit and encourage people to speak out. And, you know, so that's one direction, I think that I see a potential application later down the road. We're still in the process of exactly figuring out, you know, what is going on. Can we find a mechanism that is driving this effect? But, you know, I feel pretty confident that it seems like a pretty solvable issue. 

Melinda: Yeah, it's interesting because I do a lot of leadership development work and coaching and consulting and one of the things that comes up again and again is, you know, a term that I've landed on is compassionate assertiveness, because I think people sometimes when they hold back, they don't want to be aggressive or kind of that like prototypical traditional, you know, autocratic leader.

But how can I be both compassionate and assertive? And that seems to for me, it was very helpful. And it seems to be helpful for others as well. Yeah. Kind of… 

Indre: Yeah, I love that. I love that term. 

Melinda: Yeah. So, okay, I want to, again, I've been listening to some episodes of your podcast, Inquiring Minds, and you've done some shows recently on kind of communication, but also you did one on secrets and one about con artists.

So there's this element of deception. And that really intrigued me because I was actually a victim of a con artist many, many years ago, somebody that I dated and, you know, but he was very creative in the way that he made up a whole story about himself and who he was and what he was up to. And so this kind of provoked in my mind, you know, we love to celebrate creativity and how wonderful it is and everything, but there can be a dark side to creativity as well, particularly in terms of deception.

Or maybe people with more nefarious agendas. So, what have you learned about the dark side of creativity? 

Indre: Yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting that people tend to have a, like if you did like an implicit attitudes test on creativity, I agree that most people would see it as like a positive thing. There's nothing inherently positive about the definition of a creative product, which is that it's novel and useful. Right? 

So that usefulness very much depends on your position, right? Your perspective. You know, it could be a really big, useful weapon that causes mass destruction and that would be considered highly creative. So I don't think that, I think that creativity just doesn't on its own have a valence, kind of a positive or a negative impact on a person's life.

But I do think in general, and this comes from an experience I had, I did a show, about just over ten years ago for the Oprah Winfrey Network called Miracle Detectives, where I was the scientific foil to a journalist who is a believer in miracles. And we went around the country and we, you know, investigated people's claims of miracles that happened to them.

And one of the things that really struck me in that journey, I got to talk to people, you know, in places and situations that I never would have bumped into, like it really expanded my world of kind of understanding people in different situations. And like the vast majority of people that I spoke to, just inherently were good.

Like they just wanted to be good people. They wanted to help. Like they had good intentions, pro-social intentions, if we want to be like, scientific about it. So I think that, you know, for most people, creativity is a vehicle through which they can reach their pro-social goals or, you know, they can live their values and their values tend to be, I think, you know, pro-social and good.

But yeah, that doesn't mean, you asked sort of more about the dark side of creativity. I think there's nothing inherent about the creative process that, you know, requires the output to be helpful to society rather than hurtful to society. And I think all the same mechanisms and tools, etc. apply, even if your goal is to deceive someone or, you know, to con someone.

I think what's been fascinating to me is when you talk to people who have really done a lot of research or thought very deeply about the differences, there is this difference between empathy and compassion. A lot of people, I think, think of them as the same. But, you know, compassion is really taking empathy, which is putting yourself in someone else's shoes, sort of feeling what they feel, thinking what they think, and then, you know, be doing something good with that information. Right. Help them in some way. 

But that information in and of itself doesn't need to be, particularly, you can be highly empathetic and still and even more effectively con someone. Right. You know exactly how they think and feel, you can much more easily manipulate them.

So I think we're learning more and more what is this difference and when does it snap into, like, when does compassion overlay onto that? I think there's probably genetic variation, just like there is for, like, novelty seeking behavior and other of these kinds of traits. I think there's probably elements of the way people were attached to their parents or were brought up with their caregiver situation early on. And how they learned to trust or not trust those around them. 

You know, I think there are a lot of these different elements that come into play and I mean this is kind of what's exciting about a more automated work future is that I think we'll have more time and more tools to get at some of these really complex relationships and like, wouldn't it be great if, you know, so many caregivers of children could spend less time at work and more time and more energy, like making their kids feel loved?

Melinda: For sure, right? 

Indre: So, I don't know. I mean, I think that that's kind of, that's sort of the direction that I go into. But I think it is really interesting. And, to think about creativity as having this association with. positive outcomes for society, but it doesn't have to. Then that being said, there are a lot of problems that society is facing that I think will require creativity.

Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah. So speaking of kids, I know you have kids of your own. And so being a creativity and neuroscience researcher, how are you teaching creativity to your own kids? 

Indre: Yeah. So we have one rule in our household, we have lots of rules. But one of them is that in any given semester or whatever part of the year, they have to do one sport and one musical activity. But they can choose whatever they want.

So I'm not gonna prescribe what sport that is or what musical activity that is. But the reason that I kind of encourage them to do both is that I think that you can get different skills and different perspectives from each of those and different benefits, obviously, from each of those pursuits. And we do encourage them to, like, when, you know, the choices of the things that they do, we do try to encourage them, to have sort of more creative choices.

So, for example, like my son, he wanted to learn to play the piano, and at first, like, we had teachers who were very much like, starting with the books and all of this. And, you know, it just didn't seem to resonate with him and his strengths and weaknesses. And so instead, we just started encouraging him to improvise.

He had a really great teacher early on, actually. We were shocked, at the first concert when he was really young, like maybe 5 or 6 years old. And, you know, all these kids came in and they played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and, you know, took a bow. And they were all very professional. And, you know, there was my son and he kind of, you know, you could tell he was like, didn't want to be on stage or looked at.

And then he started improvising with the teacher and the room just went silent. It was like you could hear a pin drop. It was like this stuff that we'd never heard would come, like, was coming out of him. So then we worked very hard to make sure that that flame doesn't get extinguished. So we, you know, when that teacher couldn't teach him anymore, we worked very hard to find another one.

We explained to that other one like, look, you know, this is going to be hard for him, but this is really where his strengths are. You know, we encourage all of the other elements now. So he's really into Star Wars. And so he likes to listen to the music in Star Wars and he can literally from hearing a couple of chords or a couple of bits of a melody, tell you which film it is on, what the scene was and everything, it’s really, really great ear in that way.

And then he can, and so we encourage him to do all that. Like we're not saying, okay, but you need to just put that aside and go back to “Twinkle Twinkle.” You know, we say, okay, like, listen, you want to have your downtime, your iPad time, listen to a whole bunch of Star Wars music and then go to that, you know?

So I think that having that, kind of seeing what it is that interests them and then taking it to the next level, giving them, like, teaching them, like, no, but you still need to practice, you know, 15 minutes a day or half an hour a day because you need to get the actual physical skills so that you can play this on the piano.

But, you know, doing it within the context of, like, we know very clearly what the goal is. You want to play the Star Wars theme. Anyway. So that's kind of a long way around to say that we both recognize the importance of skill building, which sometimes is not fun. And sometimes we have to just, you know, there's a bit of, well, no, you just have to do this now.

But making sure that they understand that the ultimate goal is one that is in line with their own creative expression. And then I would just say the other thing is that we very much talk to them like adults. And sometimes that gets us in trouble in situations where they talk back to us. And people are like, how do you let your… well, because we respect them in that kind of intellectual way.

And I don't know if it's the right thing to do or not, but I feel like it's led them to be pretty creative because they know that they can express, they're not going to get punished for saying what's on their mind or for, you know, dressing however they want or whatever, at least not in our household. 

Melinda: Yeah, love that. I think the time is flying by, so I'm conscious of that. But, since we're both podcasters and you've been doing your Inquiring Minds show for ten years now, congratulations. I'm curious, kind of, what you look for in a guest or, you know, what makes a good episode? I know you're an avid podcast listener also.

Indre: Yeah. So, I mean, I actually have four different podcasts that I've done. Inquiring Minds is the is the kind of long form interview, weekly, it’s not quite weekly anymore, but, you know, several times a month kind of show that is a conversation. And the other podcasts are much more produced, like they’re season based and they're, you know, a lot of storyboarding and script writing.

And so the kind of person that I interview in those two different scenarios is going to be different. You know, I've done, you know, I think we have something like 400 and something episodes of Inquiring Minds. And I have done a lot of interviews for City Arts and lectures. And so, it took me a long time to learn how to be, you know, an interviewer.

But now I feel pretty confident that, unless the person really is defensive or just, like, unwilling to talk, that I can get an interesting conversation going in some way. But what I really look for is someone who, is passionate about whatever it is that their, you know, work is and that it's also pretty specific because I like to say that, not just me, a lot of people say this, that podcasting is an embarrassment of niches. And like, I know my niche audience and I know my niche audience is really interested in the details, you know, we’re nerds, we’re geeks, like, however you want to say it. And so it has to be, someone has to be able to go deep.

I don’t want sound bites. If someone is just going to give me like a superficial, you know, look. And so I read the books, you know, I have the stack of books of people that, you know, have written that and a lot of publishers now, you know, suggest, potential interviews and they send me these galley copies of the books. And so I make sure that the book is written with a level of depth that my audience will really respond well to. 

Melinda: And does that always translate into a dynamic conversation?

Indre: No, not always. There are times where I have to, like, salvage it. But what I tend to do in those situations is, you know, I also read the book, but I highlight elements of the book that I really want to hearken back.

And this is also where you get a sense very quickly of whether this book was written because the person felt they should write this book or whether this book, because they had to write this book, they had to get it out. Because the people who had to get it out, and I say to them, oh, yeah, you know, in this one chapter, you talk to this one person who was like wearing, you know, blue shoes and had a yellow hat, and they know exactly what I'm talking about.

They jump into that story right away, you know, so I have to give them those details to say, hey, let's talk about this moment in the book, and I have to pick moments in the book that I think will be interesting to people who haven't read the whole book. But that sort of, and so if I do something like that and the person's like, oh, let me, I don't remember. Let me look that up, for the answer, then I know, okay, I got to stay high level. Maybe I need to talk about this person’s other work or like.  And in the rare cases, I just won't release that interview. 

Melinda: Yeah. For sure. Makes sense. Well, we're getting toward the end of our time. I really appreciate your coming on the show, and I like to try to end each episode with what I call a Creativity Pro Tip.

So something actionable that people can take with them and try out. So do you have kind of a go-to suggestion for people who maybe are stuck in their creative process or wanting to reconnect with their creativity? 

Indre: Yeah. So this is actually something I saw, I think like on social media recently, where this one kind of professor of storytelling was giving advice to his students.

And I think this actually applies to anyone who's finding themselves in a block. You know, storytelling, you know, a lot of us think about, storytelling is a great scaffold. It's a great framework. In fact, narrative thinking is, I think, really undervalued in terms of a way of thinking and strategizing. But it's really effective no matter what you're doing, if you're giving a business presentation and you're, you know, trying to convince, trying to sell somebody something, or whatever it is you're doing. If you can put it into a story format which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, there's some kind of drama, there's some tension that you put up, and then there's like a climax and a release that's always going to be better. 

And in this case, like so the pro tip I would say is that like when you're stuck and you're trying to figure out like what the next step is, often in a story, when we're, novices will think like, okay, so x happened and then y happened and then y and then whatever.

And you kind of go on this and then and then and then. But what this, and I'm sorry that I can't remember who it was. That's terrible of me. But what this professor mentioned, was that instead of saying, and then, you should either think of a therefore, so this happened, therefore x, or a but.

Melinda: The twist.

Indre: The twist. And I think that as we're thinking about like, you know, our task, our creativity, like if you can either find the therefore, so almost like a mechanistic explanation, or a but, like what is the alternative, like, you know, design thinking, like flip on the, you know, the hat of your customer rather than, you know, your designer. I think that could be really helpful. So I guess that was my pro tip. With deepest apologies to the professor.

Melinda: We’ll try and find out who that was. [South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker].

Indre: I can send you the little thing.

Melinda: Yeah, sure. And we can include it in the show notes for sure. So speaking of which, what's the best way for people to find you and all your different efforts and projects?

Indre: Yeah. So I've tried to make my personal website, which is also my work website, kind of accessible and relatively clean, but also comprehensive. So it's indreviskontas.com, my name, first name, last name.com. And there's also a contact form there. If they want to send me an email, it’ll go straight to my inbox.

And yeah, that's how they can find me and learn about the work of my lab, but also my writings and the podcasts and, you know, other work that I do. 

Melinda: Okay. Sounds great. Thank you so much, Indre. It's been such a pleasure. 

Indre: Thanks Melinda, it's been a pleasure. 

Melinda: Find and connect with us at syncreate.org, and we're on all the major podcast platforms as well as YouTube. And we're now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review. We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, Texas, with Indre joining us from San Francisco. And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios here in Austin. Thanks so much for being with us, and see you next time.