PEL Presents PvI#123: Brain Spritzing w/ Bill Arnett and Jenny Hansen

Welcoming guests back

0:00It's not too late to sign up for my Key Ideas in the Philosophy of Mind fall online course. See partiallyexaminedlife.com slash class for details.

0:15This is Philosophy vs. Improv, where two sages try to teach each other a thing or two, and maybe you, the audience, get something out of it as well. This is Mark Linsenmeyer bringing some philosophy to you today. And this is Mary, always bringing the improv. We have two special guests, plural. Please introduce yourself, guests. Hello, or hello again. Jennifer Hansen here, philosopher, but always up to play.

0:45Good sport on improv. And Bill Arnett, strange to say a guest. Former co-host, now a guest, having to move over chairs, but excited to be here, excited to be back, excited to see everyone. This grouping, in fact, Mary was saying, she didn't even know I was inviting Jenny. I did it. It was a lovely surprise to see my unicorn sister. Having Bill as, you know, the momentous, we've waited a whole year to have you back on the show. The momentous. And yet I'm going to dilute your appearance with Jenny here as well. But this is, I think, really our season finale, or maybe Mary and I will do a one-on-one to wrap up the season.

1:19But just looking at the posting dates, you know, this is around the end of the season. And this is kind of what I would picture, if not this exact group, maybe this exact group. But going into the new season, Jenny's going to be more involved, right? You were excited about that? Hell yeah. Okay. Very excited. Hell yeah. So having me and Jenny and Mary and an improv guest, or me and Jenny and Mary and a philosophy guest, or maybe I don't have to always be there. Maybe Jenny won't always be there.

1:51Maybe Mary won't always be, you know. And then, Bill, you're going to be done. Well, I'm not committing you to anything, but I'm making a proposal here. But I know you're going to be done with school in December, right? Yes. Yes. Knock on wood. Hopefully, knock on wood. And then we'll see if I can get a job. Yes. How quickly I can turn around. So depending on your availability and whims, you could potentially be a rotating person who also... So this, right now, my wish, my ideal maximal grouping. If we were to say, these are the new hosts for the next season.

2:22Even though we know that's not going to happen, at least until Bill is freed up. And I'm not putting you on the spot, Bill. I understand. It feels kind of like tag team wrestling to me. In the mud? Sure. Mud sounds fun. Sure. Optional. Yeah. Mud right now would be great with how hot it's been. Like, yeah. That sounds amazing. Cooling mud. Yeah. Bill, you were defeated. You had stormed out of the ring and you had not been seen for a year. And now you come back with some beef with me?

2:52If you just want to backstroke with me in this mud, maybe we can work out our differences with a little synchronized mud swimming. Calm down. I mean, best idea ever. Mm-hmm. Synchronized. You seem really tense, Mr. War Pig. Why don't you just channel the pig part of your wrestling name and just get in here or I'll throw a mud ball at you. Mark, you've been disrespecting a lot of fine people in this town. That's what I hear, at least. That's what I hear. And I've had to come out of retirement, rip my shirt off in order to lay the smacketh downeth.

3:28I got to say, Bill, your plumage is looking great. Whatever you've been doing with your chest hair, it must be all this mud wrestling. I heard you really tore it up in a seaweed spat the other day. Everybody left looking amazing.

Grooming and wrestling

3:42Here's the trick. Pet comb. A dog comb. Oh, pet doggy comb. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a natural garden. You know, you just got to like wear the cone and you got to leave the plumage alone. Maybe that's what I should do about my one rogue neck hair. Maybe I should just like leave it alone and I should just let her live my best neck hair life. Out of sight, out of mind. Who knew wrestling would bring us together? See, this is what I've been having to deal with, Bill. You know, I come in here. I got the new war pig name.

4:12I got I got the tats. I'm ready to bust some heads. And then we end up talking about skin care for like. Does Piggy Piggy need a biscuit? Piggy Piggy sounds angry. Mark, I think it's time that you submit to the testosterone testing that Hegseth has been demanding. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. The respect you deserve. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm just I'm just I might be overcompensating. Maybe you need some gender affirming care, Mark. Look, your war pignesses needs a little help.

4:43Don't we all need some gender affirming care? Yeah. My truth is that I feel like I'm the only one who adopted a wrestler name and I'm trying to be out there kicking ass. And I just don't feel like I'm getting support. No. Among this group for my ass kicking. Could you just try? Just try. Just one little ass. Just one. You could. That's why I brought Jenny on. Because you could. Because I thought, you know, you could kick her a little ass. You're a big, bad war pig and everybody knows it. Let's go to the ring. Sit down. Hold hands.

5:14Yeah. Light a candle. And just sing a little. Yeah. Maybe a little humming. This is what I'm talking about. Maybe let's get in touch with our. You know what? It sounds like you need to get in touch with your root chakra. So I hear what you're saying about needing to kick some ass. Maybe the ass that you need to get in touch with is your own ass by way of your pelvic floor. I could try. For anyone, I highly recommend anyone watching this. Also, I recommend this often. But y'all, like if you can have us on in the background as the video, you get to see us

5:46like jump into these characters and you also get to see us doing our best not to corpse, which is the technical term for breaking. So just in that moment, Bill and Jenny's faces were just a treat. I would have never made it on SNL. I could have never kept a straight face. Well, that doesn't stop a lot of the people on there. But yeah, this is part of why I wanted Jenny involved more, because the conceit of the show is that somebody is teaching me improv and I'm teaching something.

6:17But, you know, Bill gave me four years of improv training already. And now Mary has given me another year with her perspective. You know, so it's sort of like on different strokes when they you know, Arnold wasn't young enough. So they got a younger kid, a littler kid. I think they do this on a lot of sitcoms. Yeah. So so I feel like having a more of a more of a newbie, but less of a newbie than are just our guests who come in every week and are merely stunned if they've never done improv before. They're merely stunned and then they go away. But Jenny, we've we've warmed up.

6:47We've molded a little bit. They did it on the Flintstones with Bam Bam and Pebbles. Oh, they did do that. What a great. Oh, that's a great connection. Connection. Don't grow up. There's no reason. We don't need to have to add a child. We don't need to add a baby. Does Scrappy-Doo fit in that canon of like bringing. Yeah. Look at these faces. Yeah. I love that my brain immediately went to Scrappy. Yeah, you can. Thank you. And what about in the Muppet canon? What is Kermit's little cousin? That little frog? What's his name?

7:19Robin. Robin. They did that with Robin. And isn't what a cutie he is. This is having a younger version, having, you know, the kid sidekick of Superman or whatever is not, it's not the same thing as Superman's no longer cute. We need to get a younger, cuter Superman to go along with Superman. What do you mean Superman's no longer cute? I mean, I guess they've done that now. What the fuck are you talking about? With like Iron Man, right? Because he's Robert Downey Jr. Got associated with Iron Man. He's no longer just somebody in a book.

7:50And he got older. And so they had to like have, you know, Iron Girl, Iron Heart, whatever that show was. I didn't even see that show. And I'm a pretty, I'm a pretty huge Marvel nerd. I'm so bad.

8:02You keep up. Yeah. There's no point.

The Odyssey film

8:05Well, speaking of medias, medias and philosophies and superheroes, Mark and Jen, have you seen The Odyssey last night? No, I want to. I haven't yet. I desperately want to, but I've, I've heard from people that I, you know, think would be really snotty about this, that it was good, but I love Christopher Nolan. So going in. Yeah. I'm assuming it's awesome because I love, and I want to see it on IMAX. Okay. I hope that's what you all did.

8:35If you saw it. I haven't yet. That's what I've heard you're supposed to do. Yeah. Okay. So you haven't seen it yet, Bill? I've not seen it yet. Surprisingly. I thought I would see it. Have you seen it, Mark? So I saw it last night. Okay. On IMAX, but I waited because every other time I get movie tickets, I get, I get them the day of. So like four hours before I go to get from the one IMAX showing and I ended up being in row two. Oh gosh, your neck. Oh Jesus Christ. Staring nearly up. So it kind of, it kind of canceled out the joy of IMAX having to have that weird skewed

9:06perspective. Did you feel bewitched by Calypso or were you three swept away? I mean, there are some attractive people. The whole thing is very, I assumed I would need it like a pee break and no, I was just glued to the screen. It's a wonderful soundtrack. It's a great way of balancing the, you know, stilted nature of the material with natural language and making you actually absorbed. You know, it's just foreign enough. Okay. I love learning all the little leaked, all the little tidbits coming out from Cinefiles

9:39that so much of it was practical effects. And that makes me happy, especially coming on the heels of Steven Spielberg being like, you know what? It's actually pretty easy and convenient. AI makes things a lot easier. That's my song. So I'm delighted that to find out how much, like I just read today that they made like edible soldiers for the Cyclops, like the seven foot tall man to play the, or not, I'm

10:10sorry, I'm mixing it up. But my point is, look it up. There's some really cool practical effects that were done that are really exciting. Oh, that's fun. Is there a philosophical angle around the Odyssey? I heard one on social media. Well, so the funny thing is that Homeric heroes are known, are discussed in philosophy as having no inner lives. They just do what they do. They have complex characters, but they do not self-reflect. No monologue, no inner monologue. That makes so much sense now that you say that, because I've always been an Odyssey, Homer,

10:42Iliad fan. Like I've been a big mythology fan my whole life. So once you say that, that like makes me like zoom out and see, yeah, there's no inner monologue, like whatever, it's all out there. Yes. And this is taken as evidence that culturally the idea of self-consciousness as we have it simply did not exist at that time. You know, this is a big Nietzsche made this point. The bicameral mind theory. Is that what you're talking about? Yes. More or less. Yes. Yeah. So that we didn't even have an inner voice at the time that this was being patched or,

11:15you know, started to be told. Wow. So per Bill's question, maybe in the original Odyssey, I mean, there's still lots of ways that philosophers use this, but the philosophical point as presented in the film is added and it's added and it is brilliant. I don't know that I want to completely give it away because it's sort of a revelation that, you know, comes up about the Trojan War that doesn't come until the end of the movie. So I appreciate you saying that there is one, but not saying it yet. Thank you.

11:46Okay. There, thereby making it so we can't talk about that, the philosophical point on this podcast quite yet, even though this will not come out for, you know, a month plus such that people will probably have seen it. Well, I'll transition us away from this topic to save us from giving spoilers.

Returning to school

12:03Bill, I'm curious, and also, you know, for everyone here, any philosophical things that have come up to you about going back to school? Was it just like Rodney Dangerfield, for instance? Exactly like Rodney Dangerfield. I love that I'm like, hi, intelligent, reflective. Mark's like, Rodney Dangerfield. Well, you know, it's that whole thing of like, why am I here? A question that is impossible to answer at 16, or you don't want to answer it at 16. I mean, and there certainly is that you're going to have your teachers, and I've certainly

12:37had grad school teachers who are all about self-improvement and the joy of education and just learning for the sake of learning, and other teachers that are like, you're here for your piece of paper, right? Let's get you your piece of paper. This is what you need for your piece of paper that is your license, the teaching, the end thing. And as someone who has been busy, I appreciate, like, let's just get you through this. Let's get, I mean, you're going to learn stuff just by doing it. I mean, we're not going to cut corners, but like, I'm not saying it's like permission to

13:07cheat on or anything, but just like. Eyes on the prize, kind of. Yeah. And just like, well, we're not going to have rigor for sake of rigor. You know, I'm not going to like, hey, you know, this is not in perfect MLA formatting, you know, kind of a thing. And there were some classes like that. And the way I know your dissertation needs to be formatted, like, but that's not, you're not going to do that as a teacher. You're not going to be any MLA formatting as a teacher. And if you should be so lucky to write a textbook, someone else will do it. Your editor will do it. Well, AI will do it now. Like, literally, like, I'm not learning any standard formatting ever again.

13:42I just, I will, I will finish my article and then I will tell the chat TPG or whatever to put it in the, make the citations look right. Let me just take a sip of my dark brown well water.

13:54So that has been the biggest philosophical difference has been this whole, like, why am I here? Is it bad for me to just kind of like, eh, I've got a good enough grade in this class right now. I can kind of 23 skidoo the final and be fine. You know, is that like, am I cheating myself? Or am I like, no, that's actually a sound, a sound thing. Maybe it's okay to cheat ourselves every now and again, or choose, you have the agency to choose where we cheat ourselves and where, and where we exert ourselves, if that makes sense.

14:24Professor Hansen, any, any response as teacher to that? Well, I have some thoughts. Cause I am. I have some thoughts. A question emerged when you made this choice, like, are we cheating ourselves or are we exerting ourselves? And hopefully there's a bunch of other responses in there, right? That maybe it's just as valuable to be just plugging away at getting this thing done than having this. Why am I here? What is, what is the purpose of this? Right. Maybe the word cheating ourselves should be reserved now only for when we've become addicted

14:58to chat GPT. Yeah.

15:03That's the only time we're cheating ourselves. Yeah. Fucking Maslow, fucking dick getting it so right that like that fucking hierarchy, three fucks in one sentence. I'm like that motherfucker. It's being reaffirmed for me that you must have basic needs met and that feeling of safety to be able to then go farther out with these like philosophical concepts and like improvising, et cetera. So I've personally had, you know, like the last couple of weeks, it's been challenging

15:34for me because some of those basic needs are not being met, but I'm still pushing myself to do the creative work even when I don't feel safe. But it like, it takes a toll over time. Yeah. That's fair. I think you've stumbled onto a great sort of philosophical topic to guide some of the sirens and the confetti cannons. Maslow was one of the first things, right? I was introduced this in freshman year college psychology class. And I think it was one of the things, you know, the first philosophical issues that really got me because my personal application of it was as a spoiled college student with no

Pleasure and education

16:11real responsibility and all my material needs met was that it couldn't just be that, you know, material needs and then self-actualization. It had to be that, no, actually the more satisfied you get, the more needs open up and you become sort of like the next level of human evolution is not Nietzsche's Superman, but is having more and more esoteric needs. Your container expanse. Not realizing that my basic needs for romance and things like that at that age were not

16:42adequately being met. I love how politely you said that. That was the most polite way to be like, when you're a horny motherfucker.

16:53Sorry. I'm especially irreverent today. And I'm also not sorry at the same time. Don't stop your irreverence. It's joy. Yeah. But no, I was thinking about the way that Mark just described Maslow as reminding me of the famous line from John Stuart Mill. He's trying to make a criticism of Bentham's utilitarianism that all we want is pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. The more pleasure, the more ethical, the better life is. And Mill's trying to say, no, humans need more than pleasure. And he said, better to be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied pig, right?

17:25And that's a certain way of getting at what you're saying is that once you start educating yourself, the things that you consider to be nurturing or beneficial or what satisfies you increases to the point where you would never feel actualized by just, you know, having constant, for me, like access to red vines and Diet Coke. Like I need more. Well, actually, interesting that you say that last night, I went to an improviser for a rich baker who we had on the show.

17:56Really swell. Yeah. Really swell guy. He was having a karaoke birthday party at Inkwell Tavern. And I'm three coming up on three years, four months, alcohol free. Yeah, girl. Go. Yeah. Thank you. And the times when I'm really challenged or are when I'm in drinking settings with other comedians, because comedians love to drink. And it was so great. Like this room, the people that Rich attracted, like it was just great to be there to celebrate him. But the room was full of like crazy talent, like Emmy winners.

18:30And like, just like, and I'm like, these are my people. These are my friends. But I found myself getting increasingly more uncomfortable as the night went on. And I could smell alcohol on people's breath. It was that we were in a back room and there was like a bar area. And I went out and I saw a friend that I really wanted to talk to at the end of the bar. So I walked to the end of the bar. In front of him are like three bottles of top shelf whiskey. And he's like getting this whiskey flight. And I'm literally feeling sick to my stomach thinking about that feeling. And I go to like, I didn't, I go to like put my hand on his back and then I like come

19:02around and then I see what's happening. And he looks at me with this, like, cause he knows that's a big like trigger for me, but also, yeah, enjoy your life, dude. Like enjoy your whiskey flight. And I blink and I make eye contact and I go, Mary, be gone. And I just like slip away because I felt so uncomfortable. So it's interesting, a thing that used to be a source of like comfort and like ritual is now like, it's like garlic to a vampire to me. And I'll put a period at the end of that thought.

19:33So just alluding to like the things that used to be so comforting before when we electively keep transforming and changing, feeling that moment where those atmospheres that used to be like, I would be there till like two in the morning, like ending the party and being the bell of the ball, I'm now like, it was so nice to see you kisses by. And then I just like disappear. Yeah. Well, it could be something about how just food, clothing, shelter, and the basic needs change with context and maybe they change, you know, where you are.

20:03And if you, you're somebody who's plus one at a party and don't know anybody else, you may be having, I have different needs right now. Someone to sit next to who's not weird. It's a place to stand, you know, close to an exit. Yes. Or I've enjoyed it mostly. When you say it, what is it that you have enjoyed mostly?

Credentials and systems

20:23My continuing education. Education. Yeah. Great. Edumacation, as they call it. Edumacation. It is hard to not be a little cynical. Sure. When you kind of step back and look at the whole system and the whole, like, I'm a substitute teacher, I'm a very good substitute teacher, but I don't have that little piece of paper that will triple my paycheck. You know what I'm saying? And in order to get that little piece of paper that triples my paycheck, I got to go give someone else some money. And it's very cynical. But like at the end of the day, you know, if you're an alien watching this who knows nothing about human culture, that's all you're seeing.

20:53Well, now they have that piece of paper. So now they can make more money. To get more paper. A piece of paper for paper. Yes. Bill needs bills to pay the bills. Oh, sing-a-ling-a-ding-dong.

21:05I call that play the game, but don't be the game. Well, sure. Right now, I have an application and to be an assistant stage manager at Disneyland, which would be an absolute dream job. So I've been kind of like working through the system of people that I know that work for Disney, like trying to get like some information or optics or like, let me just find out what like the email algorithm is for Disney employees. The lesson that's been missing, in my opinion, after substituting for several years and going to teaching school has been a presumption.

21:36And it's not a full presumption, but it's kind of this, let's just assume that all students are the same and have the same motivations and same willingness to be there. Now we do, they have different backgrounds and there are different, they are coming from different places and they may be different learners and whatnot, but all that is just kind it feels kind of hand wavy sometimes and we spend far more time talking about different testing strategies and whatnot. But as a sub, I feel like it is so, that's the variable. That's like the key. Like if I said to you, all right, Mark, we're going to be teaching an Algebra 1 class, pick

22:06whatever syllabus you want for Algebra 1, you know, pick the most high tech, you know, AI syllabus where all the teachers, all the students have headsets on, great. My syllabus is going to be whatever I did in 1988 Algebra, you know, in middle school, whatever, you know, junior high, and I'll use the same book and the same exact tests. And at the end of the year, we'll give the kids the same Algebra test to see whose students did better. Oh, by the way, your five best students come to me, my five worst students go to you. Go. You know, it's like, well, wait a minute. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

22:38Mr. Arnett, I mean, I know I signed up for the gamified education and that only one of the three of us who made it to this final round will actually advance from substitute teacher to full-time teacher. But I'm just, I'm not prepared to do this syllabus. What's a syllabus? This is a math curriculum from 1784. It was used at Oxford University. That's right. The Oxford University. So, yeah, this is highly unethical. Let me just get that out. Let me just clear the water right now.

23:09This is highly unethical. We'll worry about that later. We'll let history decide. So, yeah, you need to teach your class using this syllabus from Oxford University from 1785. I'm going to use the red button and pass it to Jenny. You get the syllabus from 1785. What do I do? I have to teach the syllabus from 1785? You can do it, Jenny. I believe in you. Great. The problems will be so much easier. Well, it's all written in script. You got to be able to read. And the students have to be able to read script as well. It's not printed.

23:39You mean they have to do the thing in the cursive? They have to write? They have to write Andrews in cursive. Oh, in the cursive. With the feather pens. I thought we weren't allowed to curse in the classroom. I think we just go all in. We just get the inkwells and the calligraphy pens. We wear, I don't know, funny hats. Oh, okay. Oh, costuming. And make, I don't know, our lunches of bad bread and mead. And the women have to go sit in the hall because they're not allowed in the same room as the men. Or no, we disguise them, we put beards on them so they can pass.

24:11Oh, we have a beard budget. That's exciting.

24:16Yeah. How fun. I didn't know being a substitute teacher would be so fun. If thou doth ride a horse from Oxford Town to London. Right. Going approximately 40 leagues per hour. One inch. You know. 40 leagues. It's going to be those kind of word problems. Just prepare for that. Or how much tea will I need to pollute the entire harbor? Oh, I have another one. How many times can I abuse my wife before people will notice the, how many bruises can I inflict on my wife before I am held accountable at the town council?

24:56Well, slow down. We had, we had the, the, the concept of a mathematical infinity had not been discovered yet. So, uh, that one, that one might be, I hate that I laughed at that, but that was funny. I was like, oh no, I don't like this. Good one. Yay. Descartes or Euler is going to get that involved once we get to. Oh, I feel so uncomfortable. I love it.

25:21Infinity. Good one, Bill. If this is my class though, I would look forward to when my class meets with the, uh, high-tech AI class. And then I imagine, right, it's like a scene out of Star Trek. Like, like you have to follow the prime directive. Like my class is going to have to look at these odd people with, with antennae coming out of their heads and tablets that move without hands with numbers falling down and be like, oh, what is that?

25:53We must not interfere with their culture. Your class can't help. Your class is not allowed to help. That would violate the prime directive. Yeah. In education school, is there something about, something comparable to the prime directive where, you know, when you're teaching the kids, you don't want, you know, yes, they're there to be molded and you, but you can't cross certain lines. You can't mold them too much. You can't push your. You can't hold them at all. There is no holding. That's day one. We'll say that right now. No touching. It's like Arrested Development. No touching.

26:23So no, no. Yeah. They teach you how to not to brainwash. Only light rinsing. No brainwashing.

26:31A brain spritz. Yeah. Like an orchid with distilled water. Just a distilled brain spritz.

Infinity in math

26:39That sounds great.

Infinity in math

26:40Oh my gosh. Can I have a brain spritz? That would be amazing. Oh, we could do the brain spritz while we're in the mud pit wrestling. Oh, that sounds nice. A mud mask and a brain spritz. I mean, I think that's what the alcohol that you are no longer partaking Mary was. It was the brain. It was just, just the light spritzing. Brain spritz and mud wrestling. I did electrical engineering in my undergrad. You know, a lot of math classes and things. And infinity gets thrown around and positive infinity, negative infinity and da, da, da, da,

27:10and approaching infinity and all these things, you know. But then in an engineering class, it's not that infinity didn't come up, but this concept of finite yet uncountable came up. How many ping pong balls can you fit in an ocean liner? I don't know. It's a single number, but no one, I can't count it. But it cannot be uttered. Yes, exactly. Well, it's like, it's like Plato's Mino, where like they solve the problem, but the answer to the problem, which is like the Pythagorean question is a square root of a number, but

27:42nobody knows what a square root of a number is at that point. So it's like a mystical answer. Well, I had heard there was a whole school that thought that like, you know, square root of two doesn't exist. Right. It's an irrational number. It's an irrational number. Except in your education, it's a finite uncountable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a contradiction, if you ask me, which makes it so cool.

28:04Yeah. But we got it close enough to get to the moon. We'll approximate it. We'll get to the moon. Don't worry. Actually, I do. Okay. This might be too nerdyed out, but I do hang out a lot with my math friends over in the math. No such thing as too nerdy. But I do love my math colleagues. And when I teach ancient Greek philosophy, I often used to have one of my really cool math colleagues who actually just wrote a cool book on cats and math. And he would come in and show them the way that the Greeks would have solved this math problem. But anyways, he and I used to get in lots of debates about calculus because calculus is

28:35kind of almost like, well, I'll just do just this part of it. I'm not going to get into like that stuff, but there's almost kind of like a hand waving in calculus where you just go, you know what? I know it seems like infinity, but trust me, it just goes to zero. Like, because the funny thing is the ancient Greeks were convinced that infinity had crazy effects for us for reality. Like, you know, these problems, like the hair will never pass the turtle on a racetrack because there's an infinite number of spaces between them and you can't cross infinite

29:05spaces in a finite time, right? So calculus just solves this. And it's like, and we've solved this. There's no more infinite spaces and nobody really understands that. It's like, okay. And so the engineers are like, enough of your philosophy. We're moving on. Oh God, we went way off. Sorry, nerd. I might as well spoil this. The end of the Odyssey. I said there were some things sort of the Greeks were not aware of. And he just, they explained Cantor's various levels of infinity. I mean, that's really, Odysseus is about to slaughter the suitors and instead sits them

29:35down for a nice math lecture. And, you know. They see the problems with the fifth postulate of Euclid's geometry. I'm guessing halfway through. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's an unexpected turn, but it dramatically really pays off. I mean, that's. Just like Oppenheimer then. It's another math classic. And when Matt Damon ends it by saying, and how do you like them apples? Like, I was crying. I was so. Well, I said, well, they're finite, but uncountable.

30:06I like them. But how many? Well, it's interesting. It's like, the Greeks didn't have scratch paper or pencils. They had sticks and sand. Sand. And rocks. So, that's like, it's so inconvenient to do these things. I had a joke that like, you know why ancient Romans never discovered algebra? X always was 10. And it's, you know, that's. It's confusing. It's not always. No, but the idea of like, Roman numerals don't lend themselves to algebra. You know, it's hard to do. So, I think.

30:37And I'm sure this just happens in our life all the time, where it's like, the context that we live in, we can't see another solution because of the context we live in. That is deep. And it's like, you know, if the ancient Greeks had cheap paper and cheap pencils and unlimited supply, they probably would have figured out all kinds of other stuff. But when you're just scratching in the sand, or you just have to measure land, you stand over there with that rope. It was like, that's math. You know, that's like. That's geometry. That's geometry. Yeah. Well, what else could they have done? They didn't have scratch paper.

31:08They couldn't write all these things down. That's a great point. So, maybe we don't always have the tools at our disposal to make learning easy, to make that next realization, as opposed to a lack of intelligence or lack of curiosity or a lack of ability. I know it's kind of thing happens in improv all the time. Certainly, when people kind of transition from short form to long form or something, and you realize, oh, wait a minute. What was preventing me from doing this was not having certain tools. I could conceive of it. Wouldn't it be cool if we just had one suggestion and did a 20-minute scene of one suggestion?

31:41Yeah. But I don't have the tools to do that, for instance, until you take, oh, I'll take this another improv class. Wait a minute. They didn't tell me a secret. They just told me another way of seeing it. Scratch paper and pencils. And yeah. So much of my improv and acting coaching and teaching work lately, I love being in it and then zooming out and looking at the greater scope of my journey as a teaching artist and instructor. And I'm seeing that so much of what I do is angled towards, I'm going to introduce to you

32:12multitudinous tools. Also, multitudinous. I haven't said that word in a while. That's a fun one. I said loquacious in class yesterday. And two and a half hours later, I asked the students, I'm like, what's something that really resonated with you as like a, wow, that was cool? Or like, wow, that was challenging. And what are the students what? Loquacious is a great word. I'm going to use that. That was her contribution two and a half hours later. But anyway, my point, my point is all of this is my point. But my real point is empowering someone with a charcuterie board or like a paint palette

32:47of different things to pull from so that then when you're in that moment, you get to trust that your training, your operating system, especially if you've just had a brain spritz will be available for you. And then the first thing that pops out, like use me, be a character, try a voice. What's your point of view? Try an emotion. And then they can pull from that live in the moment. That was something I saw on television where someone had a piece of accounting paperwork from a theater in Shakespeare's time, 15, whatever, back of a paper written, oh, how'd

33:17we do tonight? Kind of a thing. How'd the theater do? And whoever was doing the accounting, the attendance for that night was all, or the week or however long the period is, was all Roman numerals. Because that's what they had, you know, when the Romans invaded and everyone was using Roman numerals. So the attendance was, you know, IIV, you know, but then the ticket money was all in Arabic numerals. That's what? That we would recognize. So it's like they're using whatever number system they're comfortable with for that job. It just, did it not occur to them?

33:49Or did it not feel comfortable? You know, why were they still using, you know, on the same piece of paper, two different number systems? So then the idea of like, well, what was the revenue per ticket? You would never, that would never occur to you. You know, even 1400 divided by V, you know, it's like, uh, you know, I mean, we, we know we do it, but like, I don't think that's going to scream at you if you've got these different numbers. If you're not even thinking these things in the same way.

Teaching and tools

34:14That's really interesting, actually. I mean, the whole thing that kind of, we keep circling around too, is that maybe there's some dispelling or, or, or, uh, demythologizing, I don't know what the right word is of what education is. Sometimes it's about giving us more tools and figuring out which are the right tools for the right thing. Right. And that a lot of people stay out of education, especially higher education, because they think, oh, well, these are the smart people. These are the people that are smart and I don't know, whatever. But I think if you want to learn, then you will find tool.

34:45I mean, whether you want to learn for credential to get, so Bill can pay bills, but yeah, I think that like a lot of education is giving people more tools. So they have more capacity to do what they want to do and figuring out that you can use multiple tools and some of them might have aesthetic preferences or weird cultural preferences. And yeah, it's, it's interesting. And there's no like one right way to teach. And there's no one curriculum. All these things follow.

35:12The thing that happens, I think in education a lot, it's like, we're just preparing the kids for what they're going to experience. Oh, right. And I, there's, there's a piece of me that kind of likes that, this idea of like, the world is not, you're not going to get a job and some, you know, your boss is going to hand you a, you know, five question essay test. You know, that's like, that's not how the world, your boss doesn't know the answer. That's what they're asking you. They're asking you to do something because they don't know the answer. And, and certainly K through K through eight, the teachers knows the answer and you're trying to get it right. But then starting in high school, it's like, we don't know the answer anymore.

35:43Uh, we need you to find it or, or get comfortable finding and find your own voice and whatnot. And I think I heard someone describe it as school is teaching people to work within a structured environment. And it's like, that's life, whether you like the structure or not, or, or whatnot, you need a new driver's license. Great. That's a structured number. You got to do certain things in order to make that happen. And if you're uncomfortable or like, well, I don't want to do something, well, you're not going to driver's license. You know, you, you, even if it's stupid or it's your job and you're a surgeon or whatever it is, you're, you're going to be in this in structured, even an improv instructor, you're

36:16going to be in a structured environment. Class starts at this time. Class ends at this time. This is the syllabus you have to do. You have to be able to work in this world that has got rules and expectations and they may not be fair and they may be weird or crazy or stupid, but sorry. You know, that's one of the biggest complaints that I've heard from bosses is that workers don't know how to take initiative, that they require too much. Tell me exactly what the next step is. Tell me what to do. Whereas I want you not only to figure out how to do this thing.

36:47We have a need. I've communicated to you, figure out how to fulfill it. And then now that you know what your job is, is to fulfill that kind of need, come up with more ways. So if I say, you know, we just need this product publicized, figure it out. How do other people do it? Do some web searching. Just, you know, that obedience is trained into us and any deviance from that obedience is punished. So then the work becomes once you get older, maybe like late teens, early twenties, like

37:22while you're still in that system, unlearning what was like bullied into you to then discover your own unique voice and those adaptation skills. So I'm so much of what I see in my adult students is it takes three weeks of a two and a half hour class for them to even feel comfortable being creative and off the top of their head, because it's like, you got to unlearn. It is a lot of work, emotional, physical work to elect, to spend money and time to unlearn

37:56everything that has been learned into you. And I can understand how people don't have that fucking Maslow safety network to be able to get themselves to the place to, to unlearn everything that's been crammed into them. Yeah. Is AI cheating, helping or hurting that? A student taking the initiative to cheat on a paper? Is that actually, is that actually a good thing? Is that initiative? Oh, I'll take the teacher's prompt and put it into AI and then I'll go through it and make sure it's, doesn't sound like, you know, it's like, is that initiative?

38:29You know, in a sense it is. I mean, it's cunning initiative. So wait, last time I was actually teaching, you know, in a, an actual organization that was paying me was before AI. But I did have at least one student who's a foreign student. There was a lot of writing in the class and I figured out that he was completely getting his papers off the internet that, you know, because you could just search, you know, in the old days before AI, where you could just search for cheating like that. But I had already graded some of them. And so I actually like asked, we called it cliff notes.

38:59I had asked for them back. Like, could you give me the piece of paper back for the last couple? Cause I want to check, check. And then I had to say, okay, so actually you got zeros on all of these things. And he was very offended that he had, that I had had him contribute to his own downfall, but there was a certain, and he kind of like, look, I'm a foreign student. And this is not a reasonable expectation to have me write this much. So, you know, this is what he had to do to get the piece of paper. Cause this was a required class to get past. So, you know, while I couldn't give him a second chance based on that, and he withdrew

39:31from the class, I did admire that like, okay, that's some, that's some out of the box thinking. If you had bullshit hoops to jump through. Yeah. I was actually writing something about cheating. And it was one of my assignments about, you know, how big of a problem is this? And how do we curtail cheating? And the thing that came to mind, and this is terrible, but my son's in the Boy Scouts having a good time with it. And we've got a good group in our area and that's great. And all the adults go through this kind of pretty, pretty intense. They go there training regarding keeping predators out, out of the scouts.

40:03The philosophy is, and again, they consulted some experts in the field and it's absolute tragic that all this happened. And they, I sincerely believe that they do want to lick that problem, take care of that problem. Uh, but the, uh, I knew Mary was going to laugh and I was going to start laughing. I'm such a, I'm such a teenager at heart. You're horrible people for laughing. Oh, I'm sorry. But the, we should be canceled right now. We should be canceled right now. Yes, yes. Is that, it's impossible to try to, to have any kind of test, write this test, look into

40:34this, you know, scanner. All right. You're cool. You were even catch things after it happens. The trick is, and apparently again, they do this with child sports leagues and whatnot. The trick is you create a system where it's so much work for the predator to get involved that they don't want to do it. That's just too much work. This is too much work. You know? So there's all these rules. Oh, you can't have a scout and adult in the same room. That'd be two scouts, two adults, then adapt. You got to take this, do all this paperwork. And again, it's just, it's very onerous more so than it is informative.

41:06You know, it's, oh, I don't have to do all this. I don't have to do, oh, I got to get checked yearly. Oh, I got to, and there's all these like hoops to jump through to be involved. And it's to make it, oh, I'll go be a predator somewhere else. And it sounds terrible, but it kind of works. But they got me thinking about cheating. And it's like, well, maybe we just need to build these little systems where it's actually more work to cheat than it would be to just read the assignment, write a paper about it. Yeah, it's genius. But AI has screwed us. But that is genius. Maybe we have to, we'll have to figure that out.

41:37Yeah. I'm not positive what that would be. I think the analogy was like, hey, you walk to the coffee shop every morning or walk across campus and there's this one path you walk down. It's not on, you know, it's not on the sidewalk. I want to cut across this field. And the grass is dying because people are cutting across it. You know, that's not really, but like, hey, it saves me time. Other people are doing it. What's the big deal? Well, what if we put a fence around that? Ugh. Now we got to step over the fence in order to do it. What if we put a fence and a sign? Well, how am I going to step over the fence and make sure no one's looking? What if we put a fence, a sign, you know, do not walk on the grass and a dog?

42:10I was going to say a team of rabbit squirrels, but dog is good. A rabbit squirrel is fine. It's the idea of like, we've now made the shortcut more painful than the long way. I could see in Mary's eyes, she was about to start a scene about the lazy pedophiles. But let's not, let's not do that scene right now. Let's not do that. Mary, please. Don't, please don't. Don't, don't. Dare. Don't. No, I refute that entirely.

42:35Refute it. Back to Satan it goes. Back to Satan it goes. Bill, as our guest former host, do you want to do the honors and start sort of a final scene that we can make a meal of to finish up here? Sure.

Improvised classroom scene

42:50Okay.

Improvised classroom scene

42:51All right, you three, come on in. I bet you know why you're here. I bet you know I know why, why you're here. Let's talk about this history test you turned in, huh? Mary did it. Jessica. Mr. Walters. In my defense, it is tech week. And like, I've been scheduling my sleep in 15 minute increments. I needed some AI assistance just to like get the paper done so I could sleep so I could not get mono and like, and lose my start role in the play.

43:21So in my defense, it was a survival mechanism. And Jessica's a snitching bitch. Okay. That's not true. It's not true. She made us. Mark, your paper was also seemingly identical to Mary and Jessica's. Why do you assume that I copied from something else? I think that I'm sort of really in touch with the zeitgeist. And so often when I have a brilliant thought, I find that it immediately is everywhere else.

43:51Like, it's like, it's like the internet is reading my mind. Sure. Your paper was word for word identical to Mary and Jessica's. Well, I guess great minds think alike. That's good. That's good. Great minds think alike. Photographically alike. I think this is kind of beyond what I think the scope of reasonable is. Honestly, I think what's really important to address here is that you are such a good teacher that there was no other way for us to write the papers because of how inspired, educated,

44:27handsome, wise, discerning you are. That really, it's your fault that our papers are so similar because you're really good at your job. Well, thank you very much. Jessica, you were very quick to sell out Mary. I would love to hear your side of the story. Yeah. Fucking bitch. You can hear from a bitch. No whispering. No intimidating. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've had 10 minutes of sleep today. Okay, okay, okay. I told her how in awe I was of you too. Like how I just couldn't possibly approach your brilliance.

45:01And I was having a breakdown. We were getting a spritz in the mud bath. And I said, I don't know how to pass this class. And I don't know what happened. Things happened after that. Maybe it wasn't Mary or it might've been someone else. I mean, we took the oath. We kind of have a cult, Mr. Walters, in praise of you. And so we kind of linked our minds and, you know, my strong opinions probably made it onto their papers.

45:31But I do want you to keep in mind that mine was the original and they're just a couple of dirty cheats. So there you go. And we'd like to give you, like, as an I'm sorry gift, we've made our own brain spritz. I'm not allowed to accept gifts from students. Oh, I guess you don't want to be the best teacher you can be. That's fine. I'm not allowed to accept. It's a rule we have. It's a policy we have. What if we just loan it to you? Favoritism. What if I just set it on the desk just like you did an apple on it? What if I just set it here? Just set it down. It's common property.

46:03It belongs to society now. Y'all, we can't do this. Option A is you all get a zero on the paper. No, I can't go to study on campus. That's my sorority. Well, option two is we each do individual oral tests in my office during office hours. Can we make sure that there's two teachers present in the room for the oral test? Yes. Okay. There'd be no licking this problem. Correct. And scene. There we go.

46:33We were this far from reintroducing the lazy pedophiles. We are this far. I stopped us before we got to the pedophiles. I was like, we're doing pretty good. We can stop before pedophiles. I can cleanse. Oh, thank you. Cleanse this thing. Light a candle. Yeah.

Disney interview news

46:51Incense. Sorry. Sorry. Guys, I have to tell you, while we were recording, I got an email notification from Disney that they have requested an interview with me. Hey, congratulations. Congratulations. Speaking of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, I have been hoop jumping. My whole career is like a hoop jumping, but I'm just really happy. My prayer about it, and as I've been talking about it with cast member friends, et cetera, is I pray that they are good at their jobs and smart, and they initiate whatever that

47:22first tier is. It looks like it's like a phone call or like a Zoom meeting or something. And thankfully, they are good at their jobs, and I have an interview. And then it's game over because I'm so fucking charming, and my resume is stacked. So go get it. Well, and then you'll have that in, so finally we can pitch that animated version of the Odyssey in light of the success of the Nolan version. That's really why I'm trying to, yeah, that's my career. It's all for you. There we go. When the Cyclops sings about his sheep and how much he loves his sheep and, you know.

47:56Anime Odyssey. Animosity. Animosity! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And right at the top of the hour, too, on that. That's perfect. Well, it's totally off topic, but it just, I don't, if any of you watch the World Cup, some of those Dictator Mbappe memes that turned into anime were genius. Go find them. Go find them. Look around. Dictator Mbappe. Love it. Well, thanks so much for revisiting the cave here, Bill.

48:27Thanks so much for- Oh, indeed, indeed. For jumping into the cave. Did we even leave the cave today, or did we fall deeper? I think we fell deeper. I think we're spelunking. Yeah, I think we're deeper. An extra hole down there. To pit, to chasm, to, yes. The finite, uncountable leagues below the sea. I think that may be for the new season. We call our pad, the virtual space in which we have these shared conversations, the cave. The cave. I like it. Well, that's got some philosophical cachet as well.

48:59Yeah. With Zeno's cave, right? Isn't that a thing? Or somebody else's. Someone's got a cave. Plato's cave. For Zeno's cave, you know, you try to go in Zeno's cave, but you're always halfway in. You can never quite get there. Yeah, there's just infinity in the way. Just as long as you get consent before you go into Zeno's cave. That's all you need. You just need to get some consent first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. That's fair. All right. Bye, listeners. Thanks for being listeners. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And watch it. Hello.

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