“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” — Plato

A friend tipped me off to this wonderful episode of Krista Tippett’s “Speaking of Faith” radio show on play. She interviews Stuart Brown, M.D., a scientist who’s president and founder of the National Institute for Play(!). His research has found that play is as essential as common sense says it is–all the murderers Brown studied did not have recreational play growing up.

According to the show’s online summary, Brown also “says that pleasurable, purposeless activity prevents violence and promotes trust, empathy, and adaptability to life’s complication. He promotes cutting-edge science on human play, and draws on a rich universe of study of intelligent social animals.”

Listen to the whole radio show on play here.

Are you getting enough play in your life? Play being defined as a “puposeless, pleasurable activity”? Yeah, me either. How can we add more play to our lives? I smell a top-10 list. Coming at you soon, I will try to write it in a playful spirit!

To give us ideas, I did post a while back on how to have more fun. And here’s Holly’s great post on the healing power of a good laugh.