Permission to play with Jacob Collier
ReThinking
TED
4.7 • 626 Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Jacob Collier is a Grammy-winning musician, an exceptional teacher and communicator, and a rousing innovator onstage. Jacob joins Adam in front of a live audience at TED to give an interactive performance and share his perspective on audience participation, his insights on communication, and his unconventional approach to making music that defies genre. They also discuss Jacob’s strategy for dealing with hecklers, his “harmonically irresponsible” covers of popular songs, and the innate human desire to wiggle.
Host & Guest
Host: Adam Grant (Instagram: @adamgrant | LinkedIn: @adammgrant | Website: https://adamgrant.net/)
Guest: Jacob Collier (Instagram: @jacobcollier | YouTube: @JacobCollier | Website: https://www.jacobcollier.com/)
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ReThinking is produced by Cosmic Standard. Our Senior Producer is Jessica Glazer, our Engineer is Aja Simpson, our Technical Director is Jacob Winik, and our Executive Producer is Eliza Smith.
For the full text transcript, visit ted.com/podcasts/rethinking-with-adam-grant-transcripts
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the piano is played by Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, and educator, Jacob Collier. |
| 0:15.6 | He's about to do something really special he does with live audiences, and in this case, for podcast audiences, |
| 0:21.6 | too. |
| 0:22.6 | You want to sing? |
| 0:23.6 | You ready to sing? |
| 0:24.6 | Yeah. |
| 0:25.6 | La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la La La La La La La La La La |
| 0:40.2 | La |
| 0:40.9 | I invited Jacob to join me on stage |
| 0:42.8 | for a live recording of rethinking |
| 0:44.4 | at TED headquarters in New York. |
| 0:47.1 | In front of an intimate audience, |
| 0:48.5 | he got to showcase his favorite way to engage the room. |
| 0:51.6 | With his call and response, |
| 0:53.2 | he invited us all to experience the power of making music for ourselves to. Oh Oh |
| 1:11.6 | Oh |
| 1:13.6 | No Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the |
| 1:41.4 | science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, |
| 1:45.1 | and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways |
| 1:49.7 | of thinking. So that crowd singing with Jacob at TED, maybe you could tell we're not exactly |
| 1:55.8 | pros. But in the moment, Jacob transformed the whole audience into a choir. |
| 2:03.7 | I've been a fan of Jacob since I first came across his work. |
... |
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