Americans need to find another way forward, a way to come together to solve the issues of the day and enable our continued survival as individuals, as a nation, and as a species. We have an audacious suggestion: Turn solving these critical tasks into a game. Let’s take our innate and life-preserving love of play and competition and harness it to change human behavior. By doing so we could improve the world in a way that decades of failed public discourse have not.

This idea takes its cues from the animal kingdom. In the wild, many animals use games and play to learn and improve themselves—and, ultimately, to survive. When wolf pups or fox kits chase their siblings around and pounce on each other near their den, they are predators “playing hunt,” perfecting their prey-catching skills and improving their odds of survival. When prey such as marmot pups chase their siblings near their burrows, they are “playing escape”; their survival depends on not being killed by the likes of wolves and foxes.

Importantly, these play bouts are ritualized and highly structured, and they involve communicating through strict signals to ensure that everyone involved realizes that what follows is play. Animals take turns. They let each other know through clear signals that even though they’re playing rough, it’s still play. If someone yelps in pain, for instance, everyone pauses for a moment to give the crying play partner a chance to recover.

Hunting and escaping, of course, are crucial skills for predators and prey; engaging in this kind of behavior helps them practice managing the difficult realities they will face as adults. But play is not limited only to chasing. Animals play fight and play wrestle to learn to navigate hierarchy and difference, to negotiate with one another, and to build social bonds. The marmots Dan studies begin to create their dominance hierarchies through play. And, when the time comes to guard valued resources—whether they be food or mates—they will be ready.

Some animal play operates just as human play does: mainly for fun! Crows slide down snowy rooftops just for the thrill of doing so. Monkeys leap from treetops into ponds to experience freefall with a reassuring splash of cool water at the end. Through this seemingly purposeless play, animals learn how to navigate challenging conditions, turning chaotic experiences into manageable ones. Indeed, by playing, they learn how to contend with failure, loss, vulnerability, and also success—where the stakes are relatively low.

Yes, play is evolutionarily expensive. It can be dangerous and it takes time away from practical tasks such as procuring food and finding shelter. And, yet, it is widespread throughout a large part of the animal kingdom. Its universality is striking.

Humans are, of course, familiar with the power of play. Athletic competitions, from Little League to the Olympics, present us with goals to be achieved and obstacles to be overcome. It doesn’t matter that both goals and obstacles are artificial: landing a ball into a net carries no real weight in the outside world and has no impact on it, aside from the meaning humans ascribe to it. Participating in sports helps humans learn to manage our competitive nature, taking an adversarial drive and harnessing it to build strength and health, to learn discipline, and to even create beauty when we play a game with skill, intelligence, and grace. Sports teach us to function within a social group and can build a sense of unity and cohesion. To play with someone else, one must agree to the rules of engagement.

What if we took the model of sport further, intentionally reverse engineering serious problems and turning them into games where friendly competition can reign? If problems could be tackled in such a way, in a safe environment with agreed-upon rules, we might be able to meet more of our goals—or at least, be more prepared to face them when they reach a crisis point.

People have tried it before, as they’ve searched for certain kinds of technological solutions. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is an advanced-technology branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, charged with trying out and perfecting new technologies for potential use on the battlefield and beyond. The agency created prize competitions called DARPA Challenges that ask engineers to compete in tackling seemingly unsolvable tasks under set rules of engagement. If a team manages to solve a particular problem, it wins a prize and glory—and society benefits.

One DARPA Challenge tasked engineers with inventing self-driving vehicles. The end goal was to develop automated weapons as well as create ways to transport critical supplies on and off the battlefield, but in the process it also gave us the self-driving vehicle technology that is slowly making its way onto our streets. The X-Prize Foundation does something similar, regularly announcing an audacious goal to improve health, technology, or the environment, and asking teams to self-organize and compete for acknowledgement and a cash prize.

Leaders could expand this competitive model to confront different sorts of pressing challenges that contest designers have often overlooked—those that require behavioral change, institutional investment, and sustained action. What if we treated society’s response to the climate crisis, the COVID pandemic, or even declining faith in politics as an opportunity for international competition and Olympics-like play? Think the Eurovision Song Contest, but for carbon reduction or civic participation.

Or, if international competition seems a step too far, the focus could be local and cooperative. We already know that neighborhood play can drive immediate benefits. When cities block off traffic during Ciclovía events, for instance, encouraging the public to ride bicycles, skate, or walk, and refrain from using cars, air quality improves immediately, local businesses get increased foot traffic, and people meet neighbors and interact with strangers in ways that would otherwise be unlikely.

Government and other leaders could create friendly competition among communities to walk and bike more, buy used or reusable products, install insulation, or favor high-efficiency appliances. We could track rides on public transit and offer prizes when ridership goes up and traffic congestion goes down. What if COVID transmission rates were monitored not just as a reminder of encroaching threat but also to celebrate—and reward—declining transmission rates? Instead of bemoaning a lack of political engagement, we might instead recognize the recent upsurge in voting and encourage cities, towns, or neighborhoods to get as close to 100 percent voting as possible, vying against one another toward that goal. We could create systems to facilitate, acknowledge, and reward success while encouraging communities to see failure as useful feedback—a learning experience much like a loss on a playing field.

If we create competition between communities in the interest of solving major problems, we will also need to set limits on what can be done in the interest of winning. Rules, structures, and parameters of engagement would be key. As we encourage communities to maximize voting, for example, we will need to give them reminders that voter intimidation is beyond the bounds of healthy competition.

Fair play will matter not just as much but more than whether we win. Rules extend beyond the game space to become a code of behavior, a process for respectful interaction. And here we would be following our nonhuman relatives—including marmots, crows, monkeys, foxes, and wolves—that directly benefit from their enjoyable and structured play.

Increasingly, it seems that Americans are losing the skills that come from respectful competition and dynamic collaboration. We can reverse that trend. We can relearn how to be adaptable and collaborative, and to respect one another even as we disagree.

Americans don’t play as much as we used to; our excuse is that we don’t have the time. The majority of children play a sport but, by age 15, most have quit. If people don’t play—whether it’s soccer or chess—how will they learn how to navigate competition with civility and care? What opportunities are they taking to practice working together in a group? How will they know that coming together with respect matters more than winning, and that losing can sometimes be an opportunity for learning?

Successful public discourse, at its root, is about respect for a process, and acceptable parameters for action: honoring the limits to which we, and others, have agreed. It hinges on recognizing that our opponents are worthy. It also involves a desire for an opponent to fully engage so that we can hone our skills, refine our position, and come to a satisfying compromise.

In other words, it’s a lot like a game.

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I hadn’t expected to run anywhere near that. My best 1,500 time going into the race was 3:42—still a very respectable time by collegiate standards, but far from record- breaking. As one of the athletes who had to beg his way for a spot on the starting line—it was a late-season race, held specifically for some of the country’s top runners to lock down good times—I was just there to play follow the leader, and hopefully get carried along to a personal best, maybe even a qualifying time for that year’s Olympic trials. Instead, I won.

I can recall key parts of the race, but much of it is a blur. The last of the evening’s raindrops splashed against the track as the athletes peeled off their warm-ups. A surprising number of fans lined the track’s perimeter. After the starter fired his pistol, I fell into position toward the back of the 15-person field and focused only on the damp jerseys in front of me. I knew fatigue was due to set in soon, but once we passed the halfway point, instead of losing ground, I began to move through the field. Soon the leaders were in sight. There was life still in my legs around the final turn (how did we get here so soon)? With my eyes forward and my head up, I made my bid for the front.

Engulfed by the moment, I crossed the finish line oblivious to what I had just achieved. My legs were numb. I turned around to see who came in behind me. Then one runner a few strides back yelled to me in disbelief. He must’ve seen the clock. My coaches sprinted toward me with their hands in the air shouting just how fast I had gone.

Euphoria always follows a great race—a validation of all the work and sacrifices leading up to that moment. But this performance was different. It was difficult to understand what had happened. On paper, I was seven seconds faster than I had been when I woke up that morning, a difference that takes most competitive runners years of chipping away to achieve. Suddenly, I was part of an entirely different tier of athlete. Now I had to convince myself I belonged.

Three weeks after setting the record, I had the most devastating race of my career. At the NCAA National Championships, I bombed out of the preliminary rounds of the 1,500 meters, not even making the final. With the echo of the stadium’s crowd still audible through a tunnel and my breath still heavy, I had to compose myself before facing the media. What had happened? I was supposed to be among the best now—people wanted great things. How does the American collegiate record holder run so slow?

I’d had one goal going into those championships: to win. But entering a race with a win-or-lose attitude is a dangerous approach. With new personal records come new expectations, and after I failed to live up to mine, I quickly became haunted by doubts and disillusionment. Would that lightning ever strike twice?

The ecstasy of just a few weeks earlier began to feel like a dream.

It took me three years to run as fast as 3:35 again. After graduating from college, injuries, missed chances, and bad luck plagued each season. Eventually, I had to go back to the basics. Keep it simple. Stop the overthinking. Staying healthy became my first priority; putting one foot in front of the other the second. There was no curse to be lifted, I told myself. That quiet track in the backwoods of Pennsylvania was the same distance around as every other. I just needed the right opportunity.

It finally came last May, when I found myself just off the leader’s shoulder in the final stretch of a 1,500 in South Carolina. The race’s pacers had been hasty, and the field was competitive. Now was my time. The impulse to win overrode the pain of each step, and once again, I felt those chills shooting through my spine, masking the temptation to let up. The numbers on the big clock by the finish were lower than I had ever seen. I leaned my head forward to cut a few hundredths of a second as I crossed the line. Occasions like this are rare, and I wanted it all.

In track, as in all other sports, failure is determined by the level of success you achieve—where you set the bar for yourself, based on past accomplishments. If I hadn’t run that one extraordinary time in college, I’d have been thrilled just to be at nationals that year. But once I proved what I was capable of, I had to try to live up to it.

In this way, paradoxically, a runner’s victories are forbidding as well as euphoric. Success means new goals to obsess over and fall short of.

Last May, with the ghost of my college-self behind me, it didn’t take me long to forget my recent years of frustration. Finally, I’m able to look ahead—specifically, to next year’s Olympics. But I’m already starting to sense once again the creeping demons of my own ambitions. How do I suppress them? So far, the only trick I’ve found is to embrace the disappointment—to recall the crushing moments, and to use them as fuel to never feel that way again.

Then: keep it simple. Take the next step.

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Along the lines of American Idol or The Voice, this show was searching for—and helping to mold—the next big pop star from a region that includes Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. With Idol suffering from declining ratings and set to end next season, execs looking to make talent competition shows compelling would do well to look to Nairobi.

I’ve been working as a record producer, recording engineer, and mixer for nearly 20 years in L.A. I’ve never really watched TV talent competition shows in the U.S.—the music isn’t that engaging, they create false game-show drama to boost ratings, and they aren’t even effective in finding successful music acts. So why was I there in Nairobi to produce the studio recordings that would accompany a TV talent show in a country I’d never been to before?

It wasn’t for the money. The budget for our show was about 1/30th of American Idol or The Voice. I could have made more if I’d stayed in Los Angeles grinding out smaller gigs.

The answer: Eric Wainaina. We had been classmates in the late 1990s at Berklee College of Music, though barely acquaintances, then. He became a Kenyan superstar in 2001 when he released the song, “Nchi Ya Kitu Kidogo” (“Country Of Bribes”). It was a scathing indictment of governmental corruption in a country that had been effectively ruled by one party since its independence in 1963 until 2003.

Officials banned Eric’s song from playing on the national radio station. Police followed him. When invited to play at the national Kenya Music Festival, where the then vice president would be in attendance, Eric was harassed on stage. A reporter for the BBC interviewed Eric after the show and helped shine an international spotlight on Kenya’s democracy movement.

Sitting at home in Los Angeles, I heard that BBC interview one night. Here was a man who was using music not only for entertainment, but to create a different future for his country. I added a goal to my career to-do list: “Work with Eric Wainaina.” It took 11 years, but I finally got in touch with Eric in 2012 and I produced a re-mix of his song “Selina.” It would go on to become a huge regional hit.

Eric became the music director of Maisha Superstar, which was named after the show’s regional satellite network broadcaster, Maisha. Eric invited me to be the studio music producer, primarily responsible for making the recordings of each week’s songs to release online.

Eric Wainaina, a Kenyan pop star who served as the show’s music director, and the author

Viewers of any singing contest show will recognize the basic outline: auditions, performances, eliminations. At the beginning of each season, American Idol uses cattle-call auditions in several cities around the country so their panel of judges can select between 10 and 13 virtually unknown finalists. In contrast, we began with six successful “mentor” musical artists (two each from the three participating countries, which created a friendly regional rivalry) who searched their country for talent. By the end of the third episode, each of these mentors picked one “rookie finalist” to bring with them to Nairobi for the final nine performance shows.

Similar to The Voice, the rookies worked with their mentors through song choices, performances, arrangements, leaned on them for moral support, and had a week to work on new songs before the next episode. Unlike The Voice, each mentor had only one rookie artist and was fully invested in his or her development. Each pair worked as a team, but ultimately the rookies were competing against each other for the final prize (roughly $12,000, and a recording contract).

And, they also had Eric and me, working behind the scenes, coaching studio performances, rehearsing, recording, and helping to plan the staging of each contestant’s weekly song.

There were two other critical differences between Maisha Superstar and American music contest shows. First, Maisha Superstar’s scoring system was not based in any way on popular vote. Instead, an independent panel of judges (which did not include the mentors, Eric, or myself) accounted for 70 percent of the total, and the final 30 percent came from studio audience votes. Second, none of the rookies were eliminated during the first five weeks of performances. And while five weeks is a short time to try to find yourself as an artist or performer, it is a huge improvement over zero.

Because the scoring was cumulative and the eliminations were based on the rookies’ average score, one bad performance didn’t spell doom. In U.S. reality shows, there’s rarely such a safety net—we’re more interested in a Shark Tank or crowning a Survivor.

Did it work? I think it did. Having those first five weeks to sing without fear of elimination gave the rookies time to build a viewer following, which was important for ratings. It also freed the teams to try things they might not have otherwise. We had one rookie do an original song in week one.

And it gave the contestants time to find songs that resonated with the audience. For instance, even though all three countries share English as a common language, we found that contestants singing in Swahili, Luganda, or even a tribal language did very well. The judges and studio audience were all well aware of western Top 40 songs, but loved when the rookies “brought it home” with performances in their home language. Even if people didn’t understand exactly what words were being sung, the honesty of the connection the singers felt to the music was clearly more important.

Damian Soul, one of the rookies, getting coached by A.Y, one of the mentors

There were a few bumps in the road. The cumulative scoring system over-rewarded consistency, and under-rewarded growth. At one point, attempts to plant blatant partisans in the studio audience threatened to derail the voting. When Ugandan and Tanzanian contestants felt that the Kenyans had an unfair advantage because the show was being recorded in Nairobi, a Ugandan mentor used his formidable social media presence to try to stack the audience with Ugandans who would vote for country over performance quality. The following week one of the Kenyan contestants retaliated. Suddenly we saw audience interest drop dramatically. An announcement was made about fair voting, and thankfully those attempts to stack the deck did not derail the show.

My experience with Maisha Superstar reinforced my feeling that music stars have rarely been instant successes. There are almost always years of work that go into their career before they hit it big. Their “overnight success” is a narrative illusion created to sell records, tickets, and often for the self-aggrandizement of the people who claim to have “discovered” a new star. But the reality is far more complex. Maisha Superstar showed that the process can be entertaining for an audience as well. And that everyone benefits from the support of those around them.

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