Imagination is on full display in acting, as people pretend to be someone who they are not. How does this work? And how can the theater, broadly construed, help us to understand ourselves? John de Lancie, most well-known for his role as the trickster god Q on Star Trek (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Picard), answers these questions, and also talks about how music inspires his imagination, about how the characters he’s played have affected him, and about some surprising similarities between acting and sailing.

Learn more about John de Lancie’s musical projects at www.curtis.edu/person/john-de-lancie, or follow him on Bluesky at @johndelancie.bsky.social

Many people think that children are highly imaginative and creative, and that we lose those skills as we get older. Andrew Shtulman, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Occidental College, discusses why this belief is false and explains how creativity actually develops.

Learn more about Dr. Shtulman’s work on his website: www.oxy.edu/academics/thinking-lab

Dr. Shtulman’s latest book, Learning to Imagine, is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Imagine-Science-Discovering-Possibilities/dp/0674248171

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 the same thing as creativity? In this first episode of Imaginology, host Deena Weisberg, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova University, explains what imagination is, what it isn't, and why the line between imagination and reality is blurrier than we might think. She also previews the season ahead: conversations with psychologists, philosophers, writers, actors, and therapists, including Andrew Shtulman, PhD, on why children aren't as creative as we assume, and Star Trek's Q (John de Lancie) on the power of theater.

Imaginology is a new podcast about the science of how imagination meets reality.