Kelly Leonard: Improv Comedy at The Second City
The Science of Creativity
Kelly Leonard has been involved with improv comedy for almost 40 years. He's worked with actors and comedians including Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Keegan Michael Key, Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. He started working at the Second City Theater in Chicago in 1988, eventually becoming producer in 1992, and later, taking on roles and titles including Executive Director, Executive Vice President, and Creative Adviser. Since 2016, he’s been Vice President of Creative Strategy, Innovation, and Business Development. He’s produced hundreds of original revues. His 2015 book Yes, And received rave...
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Adam Green: The Neuroscience and Neurostimulation of Creativity
The Science of Creativity
Dr. Adam Green is an expert in brain research and neurostimulation of creativity. He also studies how the use of AI influences creativity in the user. Spoiler alert: Using AI often reduces creativity. He’s the Director of the , a founder and former president of , and Editor-In-Chief at the Creativity Research Journal. His main interest is in human creative intelligence and especially in understanding how neural processes constitute our best ideas. Adam’s work includes research into endogenous neural mechanisms and exogenous neurostimulation that support creative relational reasoning, as...
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Scott Thorp: Creative Thinking Strategies in Art and Design
The Science of Creativity
Scott Thorp is an artist, writer and educator specializing in creativity. He’s a professor at Augusta University, and is the Chair of the Department of Art and Design and the Associate Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research. Scott earned his MFA in multi-disciplinary art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. In addition to his artistic practice, he was a regular contributor to the international art magazine, , where he wrote about technology-based, contemporary artists. Before Augusta University, he was a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) from 2005 to 2015,...
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Zorana Ivcevic Pringle: The Creativity Choice
The Science of Creativity
Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, US News, Science Daily, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post. Zorana studies many aspects of the creative process, including idea generation but also creative mindsets, creative self-efficacy, and the role of emotions in creativity. Her new book is called The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action. She argues that creativity is a choice--not only...
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Jonathan Feinstein: How Lives Unfold for Exceptional Creators
The Science of Creativity
Dr. Jonathan Feinstein, a professor at Yale University, studies the developmental paths of creative individuals, including entrepreneurs, inventors, artists and scientists. His book Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts was published in 2023. He is also the author of The Nature of Creative Development (2006). His current work focuses on models of creative engagement, centering on guidance, learning, opportunities, and paths of development. What do we choose to learn and explore as we develop our creative interests and passions? What opportunities arise, which projects do we pursue? His approach...
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Charna Halpern: Improv Comedy at Chicago's iO Theater
The Science of Creativity
Everyone who works in television and movie comedy knows Charna Halpern. She’s trained thousands of actors, writers, and producers at her Chicago theater, founded in 1981, called the iO theater. In this episode, Charna tells personal and funny stories about actors from Chris Farley and Neil Flynn to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Along with actor and director Del Close, Charna invented modern improvisational theater in the 1980s. The art form known as long form improvisation—a 20 or 30-minute fully improvised one-act play—was developed at the iO theater, and is still found on their stage at...
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Mark Runco: The Psychology of Creativity, Assessment, and Creative Potential
The Science of Creativity
Dr. Mark Runco is a professor and is the Director of Creativity Research and Programming at Southern Oregon University. Over 35 years ago, he founded an influential scientific journal called The Creativity Research Journal and he was the editor of that journal until 2020. He’s published books that are widely read by creativity researchers such as his college textbook, Creativity: Research, Development, and Practice (three editions), The Creativity Research Handbook (1997, 2011, 2012), and the very first Encyclopedia of Creativity in 1999. He’s known for his studies of core topics in...
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Steve Heller: Teaching Graphic Design
The Science of Creativity
Steve Heller is arguably the world’s best-known design educator, with over 200 books on graphic design, illustration, and political art. I interviewed him for my 2025 book . His books include ; ; and (with Marshall Arisman). He’s spent most of his career at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he’s now the Special Assistant to the President and the Co-Founder and Co-Chair Emeritus of the MFA Design Department. He’s won numerous awards including Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Mind Award; Smithsonian Design Museum; National Endowment for the Arts; AIGA Medal...
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Learning to See: Inside the World's Leading Art and Design Schools
The Science of Creativity
The much-anticipated art and design book was just published by MIT Press! In this episode, author Keith Sawyer talks with Amy Climer about his new book. Learning to See is an engaging and profound account of how professional artists and designers create and how they teach others to do it. Keith spent over ten years interviewing a hundred professors who’ve taught in 50 different colleges, universities, and institutes. He also interviewed students to learn about the personal transformation they go through as they learn to see and think like successful creative professionals. Learning to...
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The 2025 Creativity Conference, episode 2: Cutting-Edge Research from Top Psychologists
The Science of Creativity
We're going to leave the podcast studio and travel to Yale University for the 2025 creativity research conference! This is the second of two episodes bringing you cutting-edge research from the conference. This episode has five interviews with leading-edge creativity researchers. There were over two hundred researchers at Yale, from around the world, including Japan, India, Europe, and South America. This is the official American Psychological Association creativity research conference. In this episode, you'll hear about research that is SO NEW that it hasn't even been published yet. Top...
info_outlineKelly Leonard has been involved with improv comedy for almost 40 years. He's worked with actors and comedians including Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Keegan Michael Key, Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. He started working at the Second City Theater in Chicago in 1988, eventually becoming producer in 1992, and later, taking on roles and titles including Executive Director, Executive Vice President, and Creative Adviser. Since 2016, he’s been Vice President of Creative Strategy, Innovation, and Business Development. He’s produced hundreds of original revues. His 2015 book Yes, And received rave reviews in Vanity Fair and the Washington Post. He co-leads a new partnership with Booth School at the University of Chicago that studies behavioral science through the lens of improvisation. He is a popular speaker, appearing at Aspen Ideas Festival, Chicago Ideas Week and TEDxBroadway and hosts the Second City Works/WGN Podcast “Getting to Yes, And.”
For additional information:
- Kelly's web site
- The book Yes, And
Music by license from SoundStripe:
- "Uptown Lovers Instrumental" by AFTERNOONZ
- "Miss Missy" by AFTERNOONZ
- "What's the Big Deal" by Ryan Saranich
Copyright (c) 2025 Keith Sawyer