Oct 13, 2026 · 9 min · 7 segments
Why do we cry at movies that we know are fictional? What do children's pretend games have in common with novelists' characters, or with war games run by government analysts? And is imagination really…
Deena WeisbergHost
Before we get to those interviews, I wanna dig just a little deeper into the definition of imagination that I'm going to be using throughout this podcast and that guides my scientific work.
What exactly is imagination? When I say the word imagination, what probably comes to mind is children playing pretend, or fantasy movies, or video games, or dressing up as someone else, or acting, or being creative.
In fact, fictional stories and pretend games are some of the forms of imagination that I'm most excited to talk about.
In my home field of cognitive science, imagination is the mental skill that allows us to get outside of current reality and think about possibilities, the skill that allows us to ask, "What if?" So of course, that includes the stories that we consume in movies and TV shows and novels because those stories aren't real.
That also includes acting or playing dress-up because then we're pretending to be someone we're not.
And that also includes doing creative work, whether making art or solving problems, because those creations involve thinking about possibilities that don't exist or don't exist yet.
But because we use imagination any time that we're not thinking about reality, it also includes some very mundane activities like daydreaming about being on vacation, or planning for the future, or thinking about something that we did in the past and considering how our present might be different if we hadn't done that thing.
Most of those scenarios aren't fantastical or creative at all, but they're all still imagination.
In fact, if you think about imagination in this broader way, I think you'll find that it takes up the majority of our cognitive lives.
Sometimes we're thinking about the here and now, but if you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time revising past events to make them go better than they actually did, or anticipating future events, or even just letting your mind wander to other scenarios that might happen.
And all of that doesn't even include all of the thousands of hours that we spend on leisure activities that involve imagination, like watching TV, reading books, or playing video games.
We're going to explore all these different facets of imagination to uncover how this important mental skill works.
Before we get to those interviews, I wanna dig just a little deeper into the definition of imagination that I'm going to be using throughout this podcast and that guides my scientific work.
What exactly is imagination? When I say the word imagination, what probably comes to mind is children playing pretend, or fantasy movies, or video games, or dressing up as someone else, or acting, or being creative.
In fact, fictional stories and pretend games are some of the forms of imagination that I'm most excited to talk about.
In my home field of cognitive science, imagination is the mental skill that allows us to get outside of current reality and think about possibilities, the skill that allows us to ask, "What if?" So of course, that includes the stories that we consume in movies and TV shows and novels because those stories aren't real.
That also includes acting or playing dress-up because then we're pretending to be someone we're not.
And that also includes doing creative work, whether making art or solving problems, because those creations involve thinking about possibilities that don't exist or don't exist yet.
But because we use imagination any time that we're not thinking about reality, it also includes some very mundane activities like daydreaming about being on vacation, or planning for the future, or thinking about something that we did in the past and considering how our present might be different if we hadn't done that thing.
Most of those scenarios aren't fantastical or creative at all, but they're all still imagination.
In fact, if you think about imagination in this broader way, I think you'll find that it takes up the majority of our cognitive lives.
Sometimes we're thinking about the here and now, but if you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time revising past events to make them go better than they actually did, or anticipating future events, or even just letting your mind wander to other scenarios that might happen.
And all of that doesn't even include all of the thousands of hours that we spend on leisure activities that involve imagination, like watching TV, reading books, or playing video games.
We're going to explore all these different facets of imagination to uncover how this important mental skill works.
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