Cas Holman (on being playful)

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Umbrella

Tv & Film, Music, Comedy

4.6 • 68.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cas Holman (Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity) is a toy creator, play designer, and author. Cas joins the Armchair Expert to discuss creating modular ecosystems of play in her toys, studying in the rainforest as a Banana Slug, and her gender-bending appearance on Maury Povich. Cas and Dax talk about learning how to both fabricate and tell a story in design school, instilling ideals with her adventure playground, and the twelve different play types for adults and children. Cas explains why the subway is such a safe space to cry, how great innovation comes from play, and that continuing to play is also a powerful form of resistance.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.
0:06.5	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.0	Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.
0:14.0	Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.
0:17.2	I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Barbara Walter.
0:21.1	Ooh.
0:21.9	It's been a minute.
0:22.9	Today we have a very interesting guest, Cass Holman.
0:30.1	She is a play designer and RISD was a RISD professor.
0:36.4	Ooh, very fancy. Which I'm embarrassed, I didn't know about RISD until we started doing this show. Remember we had a guess. And you were like, this is shameful that you don't know what RISD is. But now I do. Now you do. She has a book out now called Playful. Playful, Ding, Ding, Ding. Playful. How play shifts are thinking, inspires connection, and sparks creativity.
0:56.4	You know, the second I saw playful,
0:58.1	I was like, let's get Cass in here.
0:59.7	I know.
1:00.5	It's very us.
1:01.8	Yeah.
1:02.7	Please enjoy Cass Holman.
1:05.2	This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple Pay.
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1:12.2	it so much easier. Whether you're shopping online or in store, look for the Apple Pay button
1:17.3	or contactless symbol at checkout. No more digging for your wallet or filling out long online
1:22.6	checkout forms. It works at millions of places, including stores, websites, and apps.
1:28.2	This means you can spend less time at checkout and more time finding the perfect gifts.
	...

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