Why the best ideas come from play | Maxwell Pearce

0:03TED: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. The NBA Finals kicked off yesterday, so I think a lot of us are thinking about basketball. Harlem Globetrotter and mixed media artist Maxwell Pearce thinks about it all the time, too, but not in the way you might think. In high school, Maxwell's coach told him to stopped trying to dunk the basketball, but he didn't listen, and it changed everything. Although we were playing sports, we weren't coached to be very playful. I learned that there was a seriousness in respecting the quality of the game.

0:42But ironically, it was my playfulness that got me to this point in my career. Play is the most important ingredient in every person and every industry's evolution.

0:53TED: Maxwell, who's also known as Hops because of his ability to jump quite high, has spent his career proving that creativity and discipline aren't opposites. In his talk from our first ever Play at TED conference, he argues that the same playful mindset that got him to both places is available to all of us. He also shares more about his artwork, which he makes from a variety of mediums, including old basketballs and nets. Play has given me the flexibility, but also the vision to see these materials as something more than just what we use on the court or on the field. Stick around after the talk. We caught up with TED's curator, Chloe Shasha Brooks, who shared a few more thoughts about Maxwell, what he shared on stage and what it was like working with him behind the scenes.

1:40TED: That's all coming up right after a short break.

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4:18TED: And now, our TED Talk of the day. I am a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, a legendary exhibition basketball team that is credited for integrating the NBA, popularizing new moves like the alley-oop, and creating so many others. These are the new moves that have advanced the game, but they've also given joy to the people that come and watch us perform. And that right there is precisely how we have lasted for 100 years while also earning a spot in the Hall of Fame. Getting to this point in my career certainly was not a straight line. I've always struggled with high-level sports coaching. There's a certain culture that has excessive cursing, yelling, and also a hyper-seriousness that can really stunt your growth.

5:06Although we were playing sports, ironically, we were coached not to be very playful. I was a creative kid who loved art, but I was really, really shy. So the constant confrontation with my coaches was always robbing me of my creativity. I learned that there was a seriousness in respecting the quality of the game, whether it was basketball, football, baseball, or cross country, all of my coaches emphasized honoring and respecting the essence of their sport. And that meant taking every drill and every exercise seriously and not doing anything that will challenge the traditional way of doing things.

5:48This is exactly what led my high school coach to telling me to stop trying to dunk the basketball. But ironically, it was my playfulness that got me to this point in my career. So here's where I've landed today, and this is what I'm so excited to share with you all. Play is the most important ingredient in every person and every industry's evolution. I am an athlete and an artist, and I have witnessed how play can break rules to improve both of these worlds that I live in. So just imagine if play, creativity, and a little bit of rule-breaking was in every industry. There once was a time in basketball where dunking was frowned upon so much that the NCAA banded for nine years.

6:34Once that band was lifted, the popularity of the game skyrocketed. This context reminds me of my coaches yelling at me to stick to the fundamentals, all because I decided or had the audacity to try and dunk the ball one time. Thankfully, I didn't listen to them and I got more and more comfortable with it. And over time, I was able to land my first dunk contest. With a lot of work, I was able to build a global reputation for dunking the basketball. I began to experiment with the boundaries of this. I would incorporate things that we didn't normally associate with dunking, like with a dog. Or catching a baseball.

7:14Or catching the ball without looking from someone else who's not looking. Every time I approached this with a playful mindset, I was rewarded, not only with advancing the game, but also with the opportunities that I dreamed of as a kid. There were several video games that I used to love to play, like NBA Live and NBA 2K, and I had the opportunity to feature my dunks in both of them. I've also had the opportunity to feature my dunks in GQ Magazine, as well as SportsCenter Top Ten, and eventually received an honorable mention for an ESPY award. Unlike what my coaches constantly bickered about, being a Globetrotter requires much of the opposite.

7:56So much of what we love about the game today, a lot of that was at one point deemed as not fundamental or nontraditional. There's a beauty in balancing seriousness with play. For example, if I decided that I wanted to do something and I accidentally made a mistake, there is a way that I could brush that off. When a Globetrotter makes a mistake, they can have it be overlooked because of how they playfully embrace its direction. They recognize that something went wrong, but they actually welcome the unfamiliarity that comes with that new position. What I've learned is that in order to get to that point, you have to be able to roll with it, because otherwise, you'll stop before you're ever able to discover something new.

8:55And that is actually how we are able to stumble upon a new concept. As I mentioned before, I am also an artist. In fact, the artist side of me came before I was ever a basketball player. Basketball, amongst other sports, has allowed me to have an ongoing relationship as it impacts my practice as an artist. Sports have given me the tools to identify voids in and around my life, while also giving me a platform to fill them. Again, I was a really shy kid, so art was my way of expressing myself when sports didn't give me the opportunity to. I used to create drawings of my favorite anime characters.

9:42I would paint pictures of animals. And over time, I started to focus on people with real stories. Some of these experiences that I've had with basketball have allowed me to gain a new perspective. One day, I decided to cut up some shoelaces and put them on a canvas. I wasn't totally satisfied with it just yet, but I knew that I had something significant there. Using this as my medium has allowed me to communicate my identity through my pieces. One of these signatures that's constantly through my work is using pieces of equipment that are a part of my personal journey as an athlete. For example, sometimes that's cut up basketballs from a past Globetrotter game.

10:28Other times, that's tennis rackets from my childhood. And sometimes it's just shoelaces that I wore when I was doing something important. Play has given me the flexibility, but also the vision to see these materials as something more than just what we use on the court or on the field. All of these items, they have stories behind them. They have connections to the people that use them. Whether it's the tennis ball that bounced several thousand times to bring people together, or it's the spinning basketball

11:01that brought smiles to so many people's faces around the world.

11:04TED: Hey, y 'all. I just wanted to jump in here and share what's happening on the stage at the moment. Maxwell's holding a basketball in his hands, and he does exactly what he says. He spins it on his finger. The fun part here? He moves the spinning basketball to balance on the point of the slide clicker he's been holding in his other hand. Or if it's shoelaces that I wore on a bad day, but I knew that I needed to keep moving. Play is what brings all of these things together, figuratively and physically. the world's brightest thinkers, engineers of evolution, they all play too much. Seriously. Thank you.

11:49TED: That was Maxwell Pierce at Play at TED 2026. Now here's TED curator Chloe Shasha Brooks to share more about what it was like working with Maxwell behind the stage and how his talk came to life. It all starts with a story about his grandmother. Hey everyone, thanks for listening to Maxwell Pierce's talk. I'm Chloe Shasha Brooks, speaking to you from New York City. I'm a curator at TED, which means that I help find speakers for our programs, work with them on their talks, and get them ready for the stage. Before you go, I'm jumping in here to share some behind the scenes from Maxwell's talk, more about who he is, and why we share this talk with you today.

12:27TED: While curating this Play at TED event, all around the theme of play, it felt super important to me to include a professional athlete. But not just any athlete. The Harlem Globetrotters are inherently a playful team, bending the rules of basketball, doing wild stunts, and laughing while they're doing it. So then the question was, who from the Harlem Globetrotters should speak? Funnily enough, one of the main things that drew me to Maxwell in particular had nothing to do with the talk I invited him to give. On his Instagram, he posted a conversation with his grandmother, who's named Lovely Hill.

12:58TED: She'd been a model in her youth, and their conversation was about how she had been featured on the cover of Ebony magazine in 1961, and that saying yes to being on that edition's cover is the reason Maxwell exists today. Let me back up. Long story short, before she got that magazine cover opportunity, a doctor had scheduled a procedure for her to remove her ovaries. It was something she didn't actually want, but that her doctor prescribed to her, and she and Maxwell reflected on the fact that it was essentially forced sterilization. But something fortunately got in the way. Ebony magazine called her to be on the cover to model a hat, so she canceled her medical procedure because of the timing of that photo shoot, and that appointment never got rescheduled.

13:40The next year, Maxwell's mother was born.

13:43TED: There was something about this story and the bond between Maxwell and his grandmother in this conversation that left me with a clear, palpable sense of Maxwell's intelligence, genuine kindness, curiosity, and thoughtfulness. It felt clear to me that he had the potential to give a fantastic TED Talk. The main challenge that Maxwell and I encountered as we worked together on his script was figuring out how to strike the balance between his experience as an athlete and his journey as an artist. His art is stunning and his athletic ability is jaw-dropping. Once he narrowed in on the anchor of his talk, this idea that playfulness brings out the best in him as an athlete and as an artist, the talk structure came together more clearly so that he could really illustrate how play has been central to his personal and professional journey.

14:29TED: It was a real joy to work with Maxwell. Thank you so much for listening.

14:37TED: If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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17:35TED: like people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing which you know I love so if you want the makeup skincare hair and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with shop only at Sephora