Navied Mahdavian: Every artist will say, but they’re wrong, because cartooning. Because you can say, and with just like a few lines, you can express happiness. Because every time I am drawing something, I mean, I find that I'm recreating, like, I'm expressing on my face, exactly contorting my face as I'm drawing it. And there's constant, like, the erasing. NM: One of the things, and being here at TEDNext, is the intersections between. Like, when I was asked, I was like, I'm going, I don't know what. But then as I started thinking about it, like, realizing that there. Amy Baxter: I think that’s that the people I've met is finding threads. And then sort of pulling them where you're together. One thing I thought was interesting is that most of my life has been kind of in chunks. You know, it's like I get interested in this thing, and I do the thing, and then I move on to the next chunk. And I wondered. When you make a book, does that exercise whatever or whatever creative nugget? Or do you still keep a thread? NM: I was going to make a joke where it makes it sound. But I think the demon and for people to laugh at what I'm doing. But the book and the cartoons, because the cartoons, you're just doing one after another, and you just kind of like, turn them out. You find something that's funny, and then they're inevitably going after I've submitted, and then you just move on. Where the book is a much larger project. And, so the book that I wrote, "This Country: Searching for Home". I mean, that was a project was about three years, which is a very different that, you know, I think of something draw it, send it out, and then just. But I don't know if there's ever reaching a point of completion. But even in the process of drawing it, there's like, getting the 10,000 hours in. Where the beginning of the book the drawing, like. And I've spoken to other the frustration that when you're where you are just always, because it's a craft. And then wanting to go back and like, but then inevitably then. And I feel like that process. And so maybe that's the demon. It's just the never being satisfied. AB: Interesting, so it’s the craft, it's really more the execution of it. NM: Yeah, well then there are the ideas. So most of the work that I've been doing since I finished the book, I went from the single gag cartoons to comics that are about me and like the memoir. And so using myself that in that moment are interesting. But I think they fit into -- and so I think I'm just exploring those. And so I don't know. So there’s the craft. And I'm exploring the idea and then figuring out new ways. AB: So you -- and I'll let you, but you have moved. And one thing I find whether it's in your own I think that we know who we are because the banks of our river that keep us in place. And so when you leave those it can be very destabilizing. How do you get adjusted, and are there things you do or things that are always disorienting? NM: So I think in the past -- and I think within the first she lived in four different. And I think we always say, but then I think we're really resilient. But I don't know. And I think that there's always, and I think, like, as you get older, and like, you have the certain. But one of the questions that I explore. So it's like searching. But I think that that's just no matter where we are. And I think we have those, the concentric circles where, you know, like, your house, and your wider community. And I think that moving, there's like that inner ring, and then the outer rings are the things. And sometimes you're not able. So like when I moved to rural Idaho, I tried finding, like, circles, those outer circles. And so then there was. And so now I'm living in a new place. AB: Yeah, we used to think that, you know, happy people can be happy anywhere. And then we went to Dallas, and it was really interesting because the values of the people. It really was hard to trust. And it turned out it was much more that made us feel comfortable. Not even activities or educational level or any of those things. But what made much more. NM: I mean, what about for you? What is it like? Because, I mean, you've developed. I mean, I really want to talk, but what is it like for you, I mean, is there the moving on, excising? AB: So the thing you're referring to, my first grant was to make, and I had the idea, sitting at my desk. I'd been working with pain for so long. And you know, which pain scale. And I thought, you know, is if we had a scale for barfing, and then the last face could be. So that made me chuckle. And so then I thought, you know, actually, it's worse for many people. So I had my brother make a Python program, and we had Luke Conrad draw a whole bunch of different Ekman calls them the six -- six universal faces. So we, we represent it -- and I read all this stuff. And so we figured out which parts of a face on a cartoon made someone feel, you know, was it sweat coming out? Was it a trembling lip? Was it feeling dizzy, what was it? And so we made all. And then we had 120 faces. So it was like a little animation neutral face going blah, chunks. And then, and so the nurses would figure out each of the different. But the things that I'm most proud are that it's been translated and validated in those languages. NM: Do they keep the acronym BARF? AB: That's a great question. I don't know. I think they do, because I don't think for Baxter Animated Retching Faces Scale. But the only reason was because the journal I wanted to use the word barf. And so I snuck it in. This is the name of the creators. It came from an animation of cartoons. That's why we have to keep this name. So I got the name BARF in, and also there's a little monster. It's got a very dear place in my heart. But despite this whole, once I was done with it, I wasn't interested. I did my thing. Other people can use it. I'm on to my next thing. I got so much grief from the doctor because he was like, "Pain is dead, we've got it taken care of. Nausea is the next frontier." And I was like, well, yeah, but I'm more interested in pain. So when I get something done, I'm much more interested. And I may bring pieces with me, but it's no longer interesting. NM: As you were talking as a cartoonist, I was getting excited. And that was the thing that I was most, because I was like, something I talk about in my TED Talk is the power of cartoons and why every artist will say but they’re wrong, because cartooning. Because you can say, and with just a few lines, you can express happiness. And so as you were talking, like, finding what, but then all those in the middle, you said, that somebody had developed, which I mean, as a cartoonist, I would have loved to have known. Because every time I am drawing something, I mean, I find that I'm recreating, like, I'm trying, I'm expressing it. Contorting my face as I'm drawing it. And there's constant, like, the erasing. And so I'm constantly. And so hearing the process, like, AB: Well, and that's the thing. We had the essences of the emotions. So we had the essence of disgust, the essence of feeling. And then once those faces looked good, then everything morphed until it was incremental. And then we had real people, nurses, gauge where on that spectrum they thought 60 percent, 80 percent was. But it's interesting what you say. We just got back from going to a bunch of different. And so the time where he backed off to expressing an eyebrow and finding what the most. And I think that that is a really. NM: It's like that distillation but into just a few lines. And we’re immediately able to recognize. AB: Do you know? NM: It's the phenomenon of face pareidolia, where we see faces in inanimate objects. AB: Oh, that's cool. NM: Pareidolia. I should know this. I was a Classics Major, but yeah, I mean there's something that we see faces in, like, sort of happy, the front of a car. We see faces everywhere. And so I think that the ability to recognize smiley face as a smiley face is whatever that. AB: It's hardwired. Because developmentally for children, they are only able to see. But one of the reasons why you actually is because they're not making or they're not seeing the face shapes. That's not where their attention is. And as kids get older, their attention is not. Their attention is at a spot or a tree or something like that. So for most people, I think you're right. It's just universal. And it probably is part. Things that we may also overlap on, pain is interestingly very cultural. It is very different. NM: Go on. AB: Go on. Yeah, so there are different cultures is more what you're supposed to do. NM: It's the culture. AB: Yeah, cultural, so it is much more. It is much more permissible just to say, you know, to really lean or letting people know. And then there are cultures. And male and female feel pain differently. So it's interesting to me that cartooning symmetric amongst different cultures when one of the most basic is actually represented in very. NM: Which also, I mean, I thought about this where the ways that we, the way that we express the sort of smiley face, we don't actually frown, but we recognize the frown as being sad. But then I saw with my daughter, she actually would frown. And she would -- so there was something of our pictorial representations and whatever else in her face, and for whatever reason. And I wondered if, at what point do we lose that? Because she would definitely frown. AB: Have a full-on pout. NM: Exactly, the full-on pout. But we don't actually see adults do it. it’s usually the comical. Because I think with our expressions and our feelings and how we express them, I mean, often it's not really in the face that we're representing. It's what makes it so difficult to know, how are they actually feeling? Because we can mask it so well. Where little kids, they don't do that. AB: Nor do people with visual impairments. My son has a visual impairment. And so he has often a resting superiority face or a resting ... hungry. Many things will come across. It is also getting back this concept that if you make even holding a pencil in between, that it becomes so ingrained that you will feel happier. And so I wonder if we also negatively, because it does make us feel worse. NM: Oh, that's interesting. AB: I don't know. When you're drawing something or about something that's really. How does that change? NM: So I wrote a piece about ... I've done a couple of pieces. One about accompanying my dad and another about my grandmother before she passed. And in each of those, I mean, like ... grief is complicated. So my approach to both and to make it simple. And I did that by focusing. So one was going to dialysis with my dad. He's slowly dying of kidney failure. And then for my grandmother, one of my earliest memories. And I think that ... when we’re trying to dodge grief, we tend to caricature. And cartooning has allowed me, which then I think opens up and to my complicated. So like, with my grandmother, was just this focal point. Because there's so much, but focusing on that certain memories that were related to that and to also keep it because my grandmother's not here. So I'm, in some ways, speaking for her and on her behalf, but keeping it firmly rooted in my experience of her, if that makes sense. AB: Did coning it down? NM: Totally. Because, and particularly with comics, I tend to think of it as, like, in order to express. And so that allowed me to ...