My Secret Country

- [Marlo] Why is imagination and creativity so important?

- [Dori] Because imagination is what makes creativity.

People try as hard as they can.

They work really, really hard to be creative, but they just, they don't know how to have fun.

(upbeat instrumental music) [Marlo] So, how do you like to have fun?

- [Max] There are lots, and lots, and lots of imaginary friends.

A lot of kids have an imaginary friends and they go to that world.

- [Marlo] Oh really?

- [Max] Yeah.

- [Marlo] So what do they all do there?

- [Maxine] It's kind of like a whole different universe.

- [Max] It's like, magical.

- [Maxine] I pretend I have plugs into my mind.

I give the plugs to all my imaginary friends, they can see my stories.

- [Marlo] So, take me into the process, tell me a story.

- [Maxine] Dessert is going extinct [Dori] and everybody's ruled by a huge Goblin King.

- [Marlo] Wait, so did you say that dessert is going extinct?

- [Dori] Like, what?

- [Marlo] Cookies, cakes, cream pies, don't tell me, chocolate.

Why don't we really jump into this, dive into your minds, your imaginations and go on an adventure together, okay?

So, let's start here.

- Well, I have an imaginary world where my imaginary friends live, and they come to visit me.

This is my imaginary friend creator workshop.

So, this is kind of a sidebar where I choose what I'm drawing.

What I like most about imaginary friend world is the people there.

There's a lot of people that live there, like a billion maybe.

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and also, I can delete them.

I just wanted to see what that would be like.

So I made one kind of mean and just deleted it.

But that's the only one I've ever deleted though 'cause it all kind of important to me.

Devil Man is my favorite.

He was my first imaginary friend.

So he's like, everyone would think he would be mean but he's really nice.

He lives in my lamp in that one right there so it's like right where I sleep.

I would think like, what if I got rid of the lamp?

Like where would he go?

I don't know, if I move I would have to take the lamp.

The are whole family's like the Hairstyle family.

I have another one called Bem, he's a huge eyeball.

I like Betchaboo, he shoots things like ice cream and candy.

And there's Fugatz, and he smiles a lot.

If they do have mouths, they do speak Unique, which is a language I made up.

It would be like swirls, and loops, and stuff like that.

And if you speak it, it also sounds like a foreign language.

I also have another language that some of them speak called Tuh, and it's just a bunch of lines and dots.

There's the Timmy family, there's little Timmy, Mrs. Timmy, and Mr. Timmy.

And there's Ea, he likes sports, and there's Mr. Smiley face, Mr. Ladybug, and Invisible man, and Katy.

I made Milo an imaginary friend, my dog.

It was before she died but I was thinking like, she's not gonna last forever.

So if I make her an imaginary friend, she will.

- [Marlo] So what are your imaginary friends up to right now?

It looks like they're in a desert.

- [Maxine] Well, my character's are bad at spelling and they thought it was the Sahara dessert, and they wanted some dessert.

So they were confused because they didn't find any dessert and they traveled all over the desert looking for it.

- [Marlo] Do you think they should look for dessert not in the desert?

But wait, how do they get around?

- [Maxine] Like, they just have a portal, whenever they want to go, it appears right in front of them and it comes out wherever they want to go.

(upbeat electronic music) - [Marlo] Wow, what is happening to dessert Max, have you seen any dessert?

Or has your imaginary friend, Scwigee seen any dessert lately?

Does Scwigee even like dessert?

- [Max] What he likes to eat is wrinkly flowers.

- [Marlo] Wrinkly flowers?

- [Max] Wrinkly flowers.

- [Marlo] That sounds very nutritious.

- [Max] Yeah.

- [Opal] So, do you wanna cut the flowers for Scwigee?

- [Max] Oh yeah, okay, Scwigee will eat that.

- [Opal] Yeah, that's good, here you go.

Okay, so cut it like right down, yeah, that's good.

Okay, and then should I do this one?

- If it's wilted.

- [Opal] Okay, do you think it's wilted?

No?

- [Max] I don't think it's wilted.

- [Opal] Well, it is kind of crumply, right?

- Well, let's see.

Let's leave that one because these ones are mostly not dry, they're pretty wet.

- [Opal] Okay, but we can do this one.

- Yeah, of course, the white ones, thanks.

- [Opal] Okay, is that enough for Scwigee, or is he still hungry?

- [Max] This is enough.

- [Max] It's feeding time right now.

- [Opal] There's one there and then I'll hide one... - [Max] It's hiding time.

- [Opal] ...over here.

- [Max] Oh, ooh, I have another one.

- [Opal] Okay, so it's like an Easter egg hunt, right?

- [Max] Yeah, except with flowers.

- Okay, then we can put these ones, here we go.

- He is very good at smelling, so he'll smell that and (growls).

That's what they usually gulp.

- Okay, so then you wanna call Scwigee?

So how do you call - Scwigee, Scwigee?

Scwigee!

- [Opal] Is he gonna come?

- Yeah, "Okay, I'm coming."

(wings buzzing) - [Marlo] Max, when did you first meet your imaginary friend Scwigee?

- When I first met him I was like three.

He's has wings and a shell.

He is like a horse mixed up with a turtle.

Those are dragons.

(suspenseful music) And he does not breath fire.

He never does it because he lost all that gas, and you can't refill dragons.

He is very happy that he can't, it's because it's a bit too violent.

He is still in preschool and he is not big.

Like, he's really small so I can take care of him.

And sometimes I need dragon sitting.

- Parents don't know what to make of the products of their children's imagination sometimes.

And they sort of alternate between being sort of amused, and proud, and worried, and concerned that, what does this mean about my child?

For example, the stereotype of the child who has an imaginary friend is someone who's lost in fantasy, maybe is a little disturbed, can't make real friends, that maybe there's the dark side to it.

(ominous music) All of that is just wrong, it's completely wrong.

These children are outgoing, less shy than other children.

Mostly they're similar to other kids.

But when we find a difference, they actually show an advantage.

So they're able to take the perspective of another person better.

Sometimes they do better on tasks that involve some kind of social understanding.

They're the kind of person who just enjoys people.

And so, when they're by themselves they think about people.

- Sometimes they show better language skills.

They tend to do better on creativity tasks.

So many children have imaginary friends, it's not rare.

Having an imaginary friend is associated with resilience in kids.

It's not a symptom of the problem.

It actually shows that child is actively coping.

So sometimes children, they have an imaginary friend and they enjoy that so much, they start to have more imaginary friends and then they start to think about where their imaginary friends are when they're not with a child.

And it becomes a whole imaginary world.

- When I first found out that Dori has an imaginary world, it didn't surprise me, but it was like, oh man, I haven't been paying any attention.

(chuckles) I was kind of clueless, 'cause she's never really talked about an imaginary friend, you know?

She's never really had a buddy.

She made up somebody when she was younger and she could finally reach the light switches.

She would turn the lights on, but she wouldn't turn 'em off.

And so we were constantly saying, "Oh, you need to turn the light off.

You need to turn the light off."

And one day her dad said, "Doreanna, did you forget to turn the light off?"

And Doreanna said, "No, bad Anna is in my bedroom and she needs a light on."

- [Dori] I tried having an imaginary friend because I was an only child and it was boring, but it didn't work out, and I would just say, "Anna did it."

Or, "Anna's reading in there."

I used her as like my blame-model-thing.

- [Doreen] So, occasionally when she still forgets to turn the light off, her dad goes, "Doreanna, has Anna returned, is she back visiting you?"

And she's like, "Oh."

Right now we're at the point where opening night is tomorrow for Peter Pan Jr.

So it's a culmination of about six weeks worth of work for Doreanna, and we're all pretty excited.

- What's that in the sky?

Six, five, four, three, two, one One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight - And lost Boys and cast in general.

You know, this is gonna be the first time we have the Lost Boys hide out on stage.

We have spiked it so we know where the actual hideout is.

- [Student] Tink, Wendy is my friend, she's coming with us.

- [Student] Peter's taking us to Neverland.

I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up Not me, not me, not me, not me, no sir Not me - I like pet shops, they're fun.

They're more fun, I like having friends over 'cause then you can actually kind of play with the pet shops 'cause it's no fun if you don't have a friend over.

and kids say, "Oh, you're so lucky, you're an only child."

but you know, it's just not as fun 'cause you don't have somebody to play with when you're bored.

You don't have somebody to watch a movie with.

You don't have somebody to discuss stuff with.

You just have adults, grownups, grownups everywhere.

- [Marlo] Do you think that part of the reason you ended up creating imaginary worlds is because you are an only child?

- And I get tired of my life?

Well, everybody gets tired of their life at times and it's just fun to get a little break from it, you know?

But, you can always come back when you want.

When I first created my very first Imaginary world, it was when I was in preschool and I had Kittietopia.

Basically, all the buildings were made out of scratching posts and cat food grew on trees and lots of cats lived there, blue cats, purple cats.

Kittietopia is more cute and cuddly.

La, la, la, la, la, prancing round the garden.

Oh hi, would you like to have a tea party?

It was little kid stuff.

Kittie Topia, G. And if Verasigh were in the movies, it'd probably be PG-13, if not R. Verasigh is more scary.

Really, really scary things in Verasigh.

I didn't decide to start working on a new imaginary world.

I was in second grade, and I was bored, and I thought of a cool name.

And so, it just started getting more, and more, and more complex.

If they were to be made, like what happens in Verasigh, to be made into a book, you'd have to read a whole entire series of textbooks before you read the books to understand what's happening.

It's more complex than, "Hobbit."

- [Marlo] Can you describe what it feels like when you create and play in Verasigh?

- I don't really play in Verasigh, it's not playing, it's sort of like visiting it.

Like, I can see down from the clouds what's going on.

It's like sort of like a big giant movie.

Well, I just act it out and I just keep going and make it up as it goes.

- [Marlo] So the people in Verasigh are more like characters to you than imaginary friends?

- Yeah, and so, I don't know all of the people 'cause there's so many people and I can just make up a new character whenever I want to.

And one of my favorite characters that everybody knows about is Vera.

She was born into a family of evil spiritrins They're kind of like people.

they've got red eyes, they can turn into ravens, they can make their teeth vampires, they can suck out people's souls.

They all believed in death and blood, but she believed in life and happiness.

And everybody on that side is evil, and they're ruled by a huge Goblin king.

The goblins are really blood thirsty.

Like, the king might say, "Oh my."

Like, he doesn't think they're good enough.

Like, everybody looks up to him and stuff.

And goblins are just blood thirsty, cruel beings.

The backstory of Vera, she stood up for one of the goblins that was gonna be killed because the king was bored and everybody was like, "What?"

And the king didn't like her.

Nobody liked her because she wasn't blood thirsty like everyone else.

She wasn't really evil and stuff, and so they threw her out.

- [Marlo] Oh he threw her out.

So we're gonna have to find out what happened to Vera, but tell me a little bit more about The Goblin King and what he's up to now.

- [Dori] The goblin king is really selfish.

He wants to make other people miserable and so he does terrible things.

So maybe he created an inner critic because he's miserable to make everybody else in the world miserable by having the inner critic tell them they can't do this and stuff like that.

- [Marlo] So he creates an inner critic and sends it to earth?

- [Dori] Mmmhmm.

-Some of the things he does are just evil.

(thunder roaring) (bird chirps) (owl hoots) - [Marlo] Uh, oh, Kritik is near you, Max.

I wonder if Kritik is part of the reason for the missing dessert.

You know when you were very small you had a lot of trouble going to sleep at night.

So, we would encourage Max to have something to think about before he went to bed.

And by doing that, it helped him focus on something other than everything that seemed to bother him during the day.

And so, it was a little something he would think about before he went to bed.

And then in the morning he would have all kinds of interesting stories to tell us about his dreams, about his imaginary friends, and places, and imaginary trains.

- Yes, yes, very much.

- So it was something that really seemed to work that helped him settle down and also helped him grow and expand his own imagination, just having a little something.

Okay, I'm gonna take the whole thing and pour it into the sink.

- No.

- And I find that if he tells me something about his dragon, really, he's trying to tell me about how he's feeling.

One time what had happened was, Max came to me and said there was a monster and he was really scared of it, and we talked more about it, and there was a lot about, the monster had a lot of black smoke, and it was huge, and it was scary.

And I realized what he was talking about and what he was afraid of, was actually the refinery.

- [Reporter] We go now to Richmond, California where over 900 people have sought medical treatment at local hospitals following a massive fire at a Chevron oil refinery.

- We actually got the kids in the car and drove away till the smoke had cleared.

And so, I see that as, yeah, I'm scared of that too.

And so, part of it is like, he creates his own world based on his experiences and becomes a sort of larger comprehension of the world.

- "Oh no, I cannot hear your call.

I cannot hear your call at all, this is not good.

This is not good, and I know why.

A Mouse has hit the wire, goodbye."

Yeah, with the scissors.

Thats really funny.

Goodnight.

- [Max] Now I remember about where I start, it's at a field and there's like a brick wall.

And also, I have chalk.

I just draw a door and then I can open the door and then go inside.

And then, I get to decide which way I should go.

And then sometimes I go to the train station, then sometimes I go into the forest.

Usually the train station because that is where you don't really get lost.

Since me and Scwigee love trains, we always play trains.

Scwigee just helps get the train going because a lot of the time the train is stuck, because lots of people, they chew gum and they stick it on the tracks.

Yeah, so you have to take it off and then throw it in the garbage.

The elves drive and I do all the controls.

There is hundreds and hundreds of elves, and also one gnome.

And it's just a long deep ride.

There's no mountains in the way, but sometimes it has to go up and down because of waterfalls.

There's also a turntable, it's somewhere along the track.

- An imaginary world is a place that a child thinks about on a regular basis.

Imaginary worlds are often called paracosms.

- It's from para meaning parallel, and cosm meaning world.

So it's a parallel world.

It's an intersection of play, imagination, and creativity.

- Paracosms are created primarily in middle childhood.

So the peak time is around maybe nine or ten.

But it's also true that we see examples of paracosms in older people as well.

For example, Frida Kahlo wrote about an imaginary friend that she visited as a section in her diary that was called, "The Two Frida's."

And it's possible that the famous painting, "The Two Frida's" is a depiction of her thinking about the imaginary friend from her childhood.

Paul Taylor, who's well known for the Paul Taylor dance company, had an imaginary friend that he created when he was a child His name was George Tacit PhD.

And George Tacit PhD lived with Paul Taylor his entire life and helped out with dance productions, was sometimes acknowledged to the audience.

Play is not something incidental that just happens for a while when you're young and then we move on to better things.

Play is integral to what it means to develop creative potential and creative power.

- [Max] And in the forest, you'll almost always get lost because there's thousands, and thousands, and thousands of trees.

The flea and the fox, both of them live in the forest.

Fleas are really good at playing hide and seek because you know, they're tiny.

They're like tiny, but I can always find it because I have a tiny bell that the flea can only hear and his flea family.

(upbeat music) - [Marlo] Wait, where's Scwigee going?

- [Max] He goes to the Sahara desert.

- [Marlo] Why does he like the desert so much?

- [Max] It's because he eats a lot of cactus.

It's because it has a bunch of water in it.

- [Marlo] Hmm.

Okay, I'm gonna go visit some people while Scwigee travels.

- [Max] Yeah.

- [Marlo] So I was wondering, what is the difference between play and worldplay, and how do you know if you have a paracosm or not, for example?

- What we use to to distinguish between regular, everyday play and the paracosm is that it's persistent.

So a child will play in the same play scenario for, it'll probably be weeks, months, years that they'll be playing in this world.

It's also consistent.

So it's the same scenario over and over again.

But it's elaborative, so it will develop.

Characters maybe have different adventures and there's a sense of the history of all those adventures.

If you play in the same world over months and years, it has a lot of meaning for you.

And this is the kind of meaning that people will remember, usually for the rest of their lives.

- Why are they doing this?

Why do they have to learn about dragons, and dinosaurs, and princesses, and fairies when these are not actually things that are going on in the real world?

- The imagination needs to exercise itself.

When you exercise the body, for instance, if you jog, you don't run to go to a certain place.

You run for the sake of running.

In the same way the imagination needs to play.

- So when they enter a play world where you are the monster and I am the victim that you're trying to capture and eat up for breakfast, well, obviously this is a simulation world.

(glass shatters) (saber tooth growls) I'm not really gonna get eaten up, right?

So I can freely practice this without fear.

And that's the essence of doing it in a simulation world, a play world before you have to do it in the real world.

- So basically, just like scientists, children are sort of out there using the world as their laboratory, experimenting with the boundaries of reality, experimenting with various ways that the world could be, and thinking about alternatives in such a way that they can learn how the world really is.

- In play, children are practicing skills that are important to real life.

You have to imagine it before you can actually do it.

(fast paced music) (fast paced music continues) (dog barks) - [Marlo] Maybe Scwigee has some ideas about where to find dessert?

(fast paced music continues) What is going on with dessert?

I still think the inner Kritik might be behind this.

What do you think?

- [Dori] Maybe the inner Kritik hates dessert?

- [Marlo] Huh, I would think the inner Kritik really likes dessert.

- [Dori] The inner critic hates dessert.

- [Marlo] He hates it.

So, okay, so what's going on with dessert?

- [Maxine] They realize the reason they couldn't find dessert is that dessert is going extinct.

So wait, why is dessert going extinct?

- [Maxine] They're just running out of ingredients.

(harmonizing music) - [Marlo] Wow, you know what happens in my mind when you say that?

- [Maxine] They're just running out of ingredients, dessert is going extinct.

- Maybe not in my generation, maybe in my generation.

I have a feeling that people better hurry up on science.

For instance, the dodo bird... Dodo birds would still be alive, there wouldn't be any snakes on Guam.

Guam flying fox, Tasmanian wolf, all these creatures would still be alive.

People should be nice to everything in nature.

The way we're doing this, soon we're gonna have to be moving to Mars and stuff, and there might have to be a separate planet for panda bears, and rhinos, and stuff.

- So when we created that whole story about dessert going extinct, I think we probably didn't realize it, but it was definitely subconsciously kind of related to the environment and extinction as we know it.

- A lot of cute animals are going extinct, which means that a lot of us humans are not being happy.

- Losing biodiversity and just all the animals, and creatures, and organisms on this planet as a whole is a big problem.

And I think that talking about it like, desserts going extinct, it's a much more easy way to think about it.

Like, to talk about these bigger problems.

It's an easier way for children to think about that.

- I'm not sure if anybody's given the planet its own rights yet, but I hope that'll happen sometime soon.

- [Dori] Kids especially can feel really, really powerless to what's going on because a lot of climate change and stuff kind of happens in the hands of the politicians and the people who have all this power.

But if you can have your own imaginative play where you can save something like dessert that matters to you, it's empowering in a way that makes you feel, maybe I can do something about this when I'm older, or I can do something about this now.

- [Marlo] How are we going to save dessert now?

- [Maxine] They realize they have to find three magical ingredients to make a cupcake that will explode and make it rain dessert everywhere.

- [Dori] That's a good idea.

[Max] I like it.

(upbeat music) - [Dori] Well, what are the three ingredients?

- [Maxine] Buttercream frosting, chocolate batter, and rainbow sprinkles.

- [Marlo] So where do they start?

- [Maxine] They ask the portal to take them to the first ingredient to make the cupcake, buttercream frosting.

(dog huffs) (car engine roaring) Maybe the first time I really thought about conservation, I think I was a teenager already.

But at some point the US Postal Office made a set of stamps that were really pretty, and they were endangered species from the US.

I really liked looking at this set of stamps, about like the whole block.

And that might've been the first time I, I don't know if maybe it was the first time I heard about endangered species.

It was certainly the first time I really thought about endangered species and what that meant.

And so, my way of saving them, which is like a little game, was to put all of these animals in Karland.

Kind of the idea was that, even if they're extinct in reality they'll live in Karland, they'll have a habitat in Karland where they can survive.

- [Marlo] And Karland was your imaginary world that you invented and played in?

- [Meredith] I think I was nine when it started, yeah.

- [Marlo] Tell me about Karland.

- [Meredith] If I was gonna describe what it's like to be in Karland, let's say, if you were in a village, so there might be some cattle or something, and like geese, and the people, they should be friendly and most people are literate.

So we could communicate by writing.

In the middle of the village, they'd take us to see the chief.

If you'd went on after that, it's kind of an open woodland with some forest and lots of streams.

It's not a huge island as you could walk across the other end and you get to the sea.

So that was just sort of a way of thinking about things that I found amusing, you know?

And then it just got more and more complex.

Everything I learned about, I integrated into it.

I would see something I liked and I'd think, "Well, what would be the version for the Kar people?"

And then I would make one, and illustrate it, and write a text about it, and whatever.

That was fun, and then later on as I got older, I kept doing all those things but my interest shifted more towards their mythology.

This is the creation myth, the God being, made the world of Kar from a bit of water, and a bit of wind, and a bit of earth, and three seeds, and made all the animals from clay, et cetera, et cetera.

Part of the goal, 'cause it was always sort of based on things I saw that I liked, was to be realistic.

You could think, "Oh that's a real civilization."

And then I realized that in multiple ways it wasn't even remotely plausible.

And I thought, "Well, I don't wanna redo it because it's just a game."

So it eventually led to my not really working on it anymore.

So when I would play with Karland, the skills that I used to play, so like drawing, making documents, recording how something is supposed to look and how it's used, are all things that I do now in my job.

So I still write lots of documents and I still record things and how they look, and take notes on how things are in nature or whatever, or in some social situation.

And I still work a lot with images, and make figures, and use photographs to illustrate things.

I feel like I'm still doing all the same things I did in Karland.

(ethereal music) - [Marlo] Wait, so what is this?

- [Dori] I'm thinking maybe they find the inner Kritik telling them, "Oh it's impossible to get all those ingredients.

You should just go home and eat some fruit.

You know, know you don't have to have dessert."

- Welcome to the quiz show, "Eat some fruit!"

With your host me, Kritik.

- [Marlo] Stop stop, stop, stop.

Wait, we don't really have time for a quiz show.

No, really, stop the music, please.

- [Kritik] Now, where were we?

- [Marlo] Hey, listen.

- [Kritik] Aah, yes.

- [Marlo] Listen, listen to me, are you listening?

- [Kritik] With your host me, Kritik.

- [Marlo] Why do you... - [Kritik] My favorite hobby is distracting you from achieving your goals and dreams.

- [Marlo] All right, fine.

- [Kritik] And your contestants.

- [Marlo] Go ahead.

- Introducing Milou.

Even though she can't carry a tune and her voice is a bit croaky, Milou loves to sing.

Milou sings.

Thank you Milou, that's quite enough.

Introducing Scwigee, Scwigee loves to drink dragon milk.

- [Max] It looks disgusting, ew.

- [Kritik] And!

The wildly enthusiastic audience.

Okay, let's go through the categories.

Cute dogs, hamster or hipster, imagination.

Doom and gloom, owls are not turtles.

Watch this, now remember, in the game, "Eat Some Fruit" the host picks the categories and provides the clues, you provide the answers, any questions?

Yes you may use your magical chalk, ready?

And we'll start with imagination for three bananas.

"A section of this Mexican artist's diary talks about drawing a door to visit her imaginary friend."

Scwigee?

Very good.

Next, imagination for one banana, "This writer from the UK began to construct an Elvin tongue as a teen."

Milou?

(dog barks) Correct, Who is Tolkien author of, "The Lord of The Rings."

On to doom and gloom for two bananas.

"Over the past years as free time for this has diminished, depression and anxiety in children has increased."

(dog barks) What is play?

Correct, that means it's time to double the fruit and get down to business.

And let's watch this until we say stop.

(dramatic music) - [Maxine] Sometimes, if you have an inner Kritik, then sometimes you have someone that brings you down.

Maybe you have someone deep inside of you that will make you happier.

And so I decided to call it the inner Myoose, and they call on the inner Myoose to overpower the inner Kritik.

(uplifting music) People try as hard as they can.

They work really, really hard to be creative, but they just, they don't know how to have fun.

(harmonizing) - [Marlo] Wait, so I think Kritik knows where the frosting is.

- [Max] Near the door.

- [Marlo] It's near the door, what door?

- [Max] And also, it's kind of a hill.

- [Max] There's kind of a dead end.

So that door we were talking about, is that here in the dead end?

- [Dori] Well I'm thinking that they could paint the door with the magic chalk.

[Max] My imaginary chalk.

- [Marlo] Ah, okay, cool idea.

- [Max] Scwigee.

- [Marlo] What's he drawing?

- [Max] The door.

- [Marlo] Right, a door.

- [Max] A door, and then another one, and another.

The door is made of stone and the stone's very heavy.

- [Marlo] Okay, can you tell me again why Scwigee drew the doors?

- [Max] We have the ingredients near the door.

- [Marlo] Oh, okay, yeah that's right, the buttercream frosting.

Let's- - [Max] Open the door.

- [Marlo] And let's see what's there.

Maybe try the next door?

Huh?

(upbeat music) - [Max] Behind the door is a bunch of trees and it's swampy trees.

- [Marlo] And what about the buttercream frosting?

(water splashing) (ominous music) (dog whimpering) (upbeat music) - [Marlo] Look out, Kritik is trying to take the frosting.

(children cheer) (upbeat music) - [Levi] Then we should all hold hands and sing, "Kumbaya."

Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya - [Maxine] I know.

- [Marlo] Vincent, you said you had an imaginary friend named God?

- Yeah, he was like the god of imaginary land and he would, we would play this fun game that was like, where we had to walk around the house and not touch or be on certain colors.

- He would like say, "God says don't touch orange."

- Levi, did you ever have an imaginary friend?

-[Levi] There was one I had for while named Dorico T. Phillips.

And he was just another character who'd like, I'd be playing with my GI Joes or something.

And then there was also Dorico, yeah, that was cool.

-[Vincent] One of my main imaginary friends was Bob and he could take form of any book in the real world, and when he got angry he would explode.

(bang) But he wouldn't kill himself.

And he was also Maxi's boyfriend for a while.

-[Maxine] Yeah, all this talk about playing it makes me wanna go make a movie or play outside.

(upbeat music) - [Vincent] Hey Jimmy, is that you?

- [Maxine] Okay, smile.

(upbeat music) [Maxine] Stop.

Stop.

[Vincent] (thud) - [Camille] I think it's interesting 'cause it was about three years ago, Maxine was seven and she started talking about how she had these pathways in her mind and she could get lost in her mind.

- [Jeff] It was kind of one of those dinner conversations where you're just sitting around the table, and I just kind of slid the phone in front of her and let her keep talking into it.

So, how do you get into being lost in your mind?

How does it start?

- [Maxine] Well, it's just like you think of something and you keep on getting deeper into the pathway.

It just turns into a total maze.

It's so fun in your mind adventure.

You are making the best story.

There can be anything you ever want, and you can do anything, and it's all up to you.

It's like you're in paradise.

My imaginary friends, I made them as a friend for myself.

Like, if I'm feeling sad they comfort me, or if I'm just lonely, or if I don't want to go to bed yet but my parents told me I have to, then I just stay up and play with them.

But it's pretty much like my world is like a reality that I want to be true because if there's things I like, then it's there, like a reality that I would want to be in.

- [Marlo] What kind of reality would you want to be in?

- [Maxine] Well, just like fantasies that I would want to happen.

- [Marlo] Maybe like saving dessert from extinction.

- [Maxine] It's kind of like daydreaming, so yeah.

- [Marlo] So what magical ingredient are we looking for now?

- [Dori] Chocolate batter.

- [Marlo] Great, and where exactly is that?

- [Maxine] My idea for the chocolate batter is when they met Vera, she had the last batch of chocolate batter.

- [Marlo] And last we saw Vera... - [Dori] She wasn't really evil and stuff, and so they threw her out.

- [Marlo] So what's going on with her now?

- [Dori] She came upon people struggling to survive, being rivals with each other.

She brought them all together.

She built up her own civilization.

And you said her part of Verasigh is really great, compared to the Goblin King's- - [Dori] Goblin King's world.

It's dark and eerie.

And so then she's hunting for the Goblin King in the goblin territory.

But then she finds the cake batter.

But she senses something sort of magical about it Upbeat music and so she decides to take it back to her area.

(Milou the dog barks) - [Marlo] So why do you think Vera seems so chill about the new visitors in her kitchen?

- [Dori] Maybe she sees that it could be a great team.

So they tell her about their adventure.

(fast paced music) She says that she'll give them the batter if they help her defeat The Goblin King who created the inner Kritik.

And then they tell her about how they met the inner Kritik.

And so, they go on a double mission.

The mission is to get the rainbow sprinkles and somehow defeat The Goblin King.

- [Marlo] Got it, stop The Goblin King and then get the rainbow sprinkles.

- [Max] How did they complete their goals?

- [Maxine] I don't know.

- [Marlo] That's a good question, Max.

- [Reporter] Attention all residents.

The Goblin King has declared a cupcake-mergency.

I repeat, we have a cupcake-mergency.

The magical batter was stolen and the masterminds are on the loose.

This confectionary catastrophe could turn into the sugary spectacle of the year.

We'll have more details at the top of the hour.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Dori discusses the importance of world building and how it has affected her personally.

- If you're watching this and you have a kid or you know a kid, and they start talking about some cool imaginary place that they've created or maybe they draw some pictures about it, ask them about it, get them to talk to you about it because I think it's a pretty good way for a kid to open up to you.

And I think it'll say a lot about their current state of mind.

You can learn a lot about what kids are passionate about through their imagination.

You can learn a lot about what's troubling them.

I struggled with a lot of negative thoughts when I was a younger kid and I slowly but surely kind of just pushed all of this negativity into Verasigh.

I think that it was a really good and effective coping strategy And when you have these imaginary characters that are going through the same things as you, sometimes it makes it a little bit easier.

- Thank you.

(suspenseful music) (cat meows) (children chatter indistinctly) (snoring) Following the leader, the leader, the leader For ever, for ever, for ever You can fly, you can fly (audience applauds) - [Marlo] Okay, so, what did they come up with?

- [Maxine] Bem speaks through telekinetic energy so he could speak to people from very far away.

- [Dori] Oh, that's cool.

- [Marlo] Okay, so they're gonna send a message to get help from the inner Myoose.

- [Max] If you wanna see someone that you know in your brain, you think about them and dream at the same time.

(upbeat music) - [Dori] Maybe she can tell him, you will use your criticism to make The Goblin King depressed.

Tell him he can't do things.

Tell him he will never win this battle, and stuff like that.

- [Kritik] Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(upbeat music) (bang) (crowd applauds) - [Marlo] This is a really big moment.

- [Dori] Woohoo!

They realize, now we can put together the ingredients.

Vera sings.

[Dori] Vera says, "Well now, let's go make those cupcakes."

- [Marlo] There's only one more ingredient to find.

- [Maxine] Rainbow Mountain.

They have to chip pieces off of it to get the sprinkles.

(upbeat music) - [Marlo] Do you still think about your imaginary friends?

- Not really at all, I felt like at the time when you were interviewing me and talking about them, it was like harder and harder for me to connect to them.

And so, one day they were just gone.

Devil Man was gone, he wasn't in the lamp anymore.

The actual physical lamp is gone now - Initially when Verasigh started kind of dying down, I was pretty aware that it was happening because it was just getting less and less interesting whenever I would have any characters do stuff.

It was just never as fun it was kind of a bittersweet thing when I stopped playing in it.

I think for a while I still kind of missed the characters that I had started to like in Verasigh, but I ended up just moving on.

- Instead of thinking of them as being gone now, I just think of them as like, that was a part of myself that I built into this thing.

And then that thing kind of dissolved, of myself, is still here.

It just manifests in different ways.

- Scwigee is still my imaginary friend.

- [Marlo] What do you and Scwigee do now together?

- Well, if I have a hard time, I'd say Scwigee, and then I'd talk to him about some of my problems, how to make them better.

So there's this thing at my dad's work that his coworkers and his friends have a rubber duck, and if they don't know what to do, they talk to their rubber duck.

And then it's just like a thing that is listening.

So Scwigee for me is kind of like a rubber duck.

(ethereal music) (dog barks) (Boom!)

(upbeat music) (harmonizing)