Gwen Gordon || Restoring the Playground

The Psychology Podcast

“Play is life force itself… when we can sense and amplify its most life-affirming, transformative impulses, it will point us directly to the Playground.”

Today it’s great pleasure to have Gwen Gordon on the podcast. Gordon began her career building Muppets for Sesame Street. Since leaving Sesame Street, Gwen developed Awakened Play, a play-based approach to making behavior change irresistible and transformation delightful. She has applied her insights in organizations ranging from San Quentin Prison to the MIT Media Lab and from IDEO to PepsiCo. Along the way, Gwen has collected a master’s degree in philosophy and an Emmy award in children’s programming. Her latest book is The Wonderful W, which is the first picture book for grownups.

In this episode we discuss:

• What is play?
• How everything is really “fear of the void”
• The doorway to the sense of wholeness
• Gwen’s experience working at Sesame Street
• Correcting the record about how Gwen created the Rockheads on Sesame Street
• Scott’s crush on Miss Piggy
• The shadow side to play
• How the playground is our true habitat
• The incredible importance of adult play
• The inherent paradoxes of play
• How play relates to attachment theory
• How play is a healthy stepping stone to healthy childhood development

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