PEL Presents PvI#126: Waiting for Cluckman w/ Anthony LeBlanc

Introducing the new season and guest

0:00This 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. Well, well, well, here we are again, Philosophy vs. Improv. I'm Mark Lentenmeyer, your emcee with a philosophy concentration, but, you know, five years of doing this improv podcast thing, so who knows? I'm joined by my co-host. Your certificate of awesome improv is on the mail to you, so you should get that soon.

0:32You hit the five-year mark, you get the certificate. I am Mary Hines, and I am delighted to bring some improvisational prowess, and we are joined by our very exciting bonus co-host. Hi, I'm Jenny Hansen. I am a pupil of improv, hoping to get better, but also bringing the philosophy and excited to figure out how all this works. Yes, Anthony, since you were last here, I've brought in a more credentialed, more teaching experience, more knowledgeable in lots of areas, second philosopher as a regular. But

1:07please introduce yourself, our special guest for today. Hi, I'm Anthony LeBlanc. I do comedy and not philosophy, but my background is computer science and physics, and my focus is AI. Awesome. But like 2001 AI, very different than now. That's so cool. Well, and in our past, you know, you've been on this show before a couple times, you've been on Pretty Much Pop, talking about Blurds and Batman with me. So, you know, I know you've got the philosophic nugget, whether you call it that or not. It's just like with improv, you know,

1:41you think you've never improv before. Well, you're talking to me without a plan. You think you've never formerly done philosophy before? Well, I've seen you. I've seen you talk. You do it. Well, thank you.

Reading Martha Nussbaum and doing homework

1:52This is the second episode of the new era, the new season where we have this assignment that we, you know, we're not going to be, it's not a partially examined life episode. We're not going to quote, quote, quote, any of that stuff, but just to give ourselves some raw material to start with, to get the conversation going on. We've been talking about this book, Martha Nussbaum's Therapy of Desire. And we had talked a little about the intro last time. So I'm very excited, especially Anthony, that we got a guest to come on and do homework. What is that about? A comedy

2:24guest that is interested in doing homework? Yeah. I love homework. It's the best. I was the guy who did homework instead of doing trick-or-treating. I thought that was actually dumb. That was your treat? Yeah. Learning is great. I think it's so important to always be living in the learning zone, right? Always find different ways to give yourself nutrient-rich inspiration. For sure. I just wish my students wanted to learn.

2:51I'm sorry, Jenny. I only keep people that- Elect into learning.

2:57Opt in. But last time we sort of introduced this by saying that we're, that this whole unit, this whole semester, this whole year perhaps would be about exploring the self-help aspect of philosophy. But now that we've read this first chapter on therapeutic arguments, it's not really a self-help. I don't think you can really do it yourself. It has to be somebody else that knows the philosophy, that knows the Stoicism, that knows the Epicureanism or whatever that is guiding you through and trying to enlighten you because you don't know what you want. I mean, you sort of know what you want, but you wouldn't need fixing if you knew everything already.

3:30Yeah, there's a power asymmetry here in this therapy process. So we have to trust that the philosopher knows things. That's an interesting point that like, oh, you can't do it yourself. But if the one who was doing the doing has a like, hey, I love learning. I love being curious. I am a flawed creature in my six foot tall meat suit, just trying to have a good life. So like if the person taking in the material has the like, I'm excited about learning. It's like working with a personal trainer. Like, yeah,

4:03you can have one session with a personal trainer and have a great time, but you got to pick up those kettlebells yourself. So I found that like in my reading these Nussbaum nutrients, it's stirring my soup and it's making me be like, oh. There still is a self-help nature if you fast forward this to the future, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Because like there's a world in which like self-help is still getting help from a book or a thing or a program or whatever, right? You're not doing it completely alone when you do

4:37it. So there's a lot of this like basically like reading this is the same thing as doing self-help, you know, as far as synthesizing the stuff that's been talked about in this. I like that. And I think it's also good for the people that might be the therapists in this like scenario to get some more help, you know, because they're expected to have so much wisdom about how to live well. And I don't know, it takes a long life to have.

Therapeutic arguments and objective morality

5:02Just by introducing what kind of arguments are these different schools going to have throughout this book? She just wants to set up this idea of a therapeutic argument as sort of midway between two extremes. The extremes being like one, morality is just an objective thing that is out there in the world and you just have to discover it. And it sort of doesn't even care, right? It's like God's law and it doesn't care what you want. God could really want you to be the kind of thing that is entirely unnatural for you to be or really anybody to be if God, you know, were a dick.

5:34So on the other extreme, it's just like, well, all ethics, all ideas of mental health, all the ideas of excellence are just what people actually want, right? The economist's approach. So preferences, yeah, just, just survey people. And there's still you, like you might be falling short of the norm, but you don't have to do any philosophy to figure that out. It's just like, are you a loser living in your basement? You know, really unhappy with yourself. There's work to be done on both sides, but you know, very different kind of where in the therapeutic thing is supposed

6:05to stand in between. What we're saying now makes me think of something that jumped out to me that I wrote alternate realities as assets for perception of truth. And by being presented with a range of realities, we see what is past our perception. So you have this like buffet of possible realities and by engaging with them, you get to shape your own sense of truth. Because I know on the last

6:37season, I feel like I kept on bringing up like, what is truth? Like, and I feel like Nussbaum is delivering a tasty meal on like, what is truth? Like truth is really completely relative. Look at me learning philosophy.

Improv scene about malfunctioning portals

6:53Anthony, the alternate realities thing. You've been on the show enough. Start us on a scene. Everyone want to let you know, the portals that will take you to your different destinations for your vacation are all malfunctioning right now. They are jumping from place to place. So it's kind of a dealer's choice of where you might end up. So we'd love to give you a refund if you don't want to go, but we'd love you to take a chance and maybe gamble on a place you never thought you'd go. Oh, Gregory, this is very exciting. You know, we were talking about wanting to change up

7:26our day-to-day. So, I mean, I packed so many snacks in my backpack and I have the charging block and the band-aids and the zinc oxide and the bear spray. So Gregory, do you want to take our relationship to next level and take a leap through a portal to the unknown together? Well, Cheryl, I was very excited about this, but I did bring just to widen your horizons. I brought another participant. Susan, do you want to, I just felt like, you know, three's company.

8:00Portal jumping's enough for me, but if we're introducing polyamory, I'm going to need some time to process. What if I do this, but we end up somewhere where there's like a giant spear that pierces through me and kills me. And then I didn't get my money back and I died. Dr. Stevens, do we have a clause built in for possible maiming or murder? First, I want to say the experience is only for two people. If you add an extra person,

8:31it's an extra charge. You can have three, but it's an extra charge. It's only an extra 50 centrals. That's a good deal. That big deal. We can definitely make it work. But if you've paid for the insurance, the sphere will be covered. Any spears, any punctual items are covered. But if that punctual item happens to be done by someone else on your vacation with you, that is not covered. Well, you know me and my temper. So I was hoping, I mean, the whole reason I brought Susan into this is because Cheryl, you know, there were certain things about you that I felt like could be supplemented and then

9:03having a, so Mr. Stevens, I was hoping that- Dr. Stevens. Dr. Stevens. I did go to school. I did go to school. Is there some kind of thing where, you know, kind of a fly situation where like you might put them in together and then they might come out as one person and then I could go with them on vacation. So it's still on the count as two. Oh, that sounds fun. The portal does take into account who you are and it's be pride ourselves on never having anyone cross-contaminated in the last 550 revolutions.

9:36Congratulations. Yeah, we really make sure that we're tip-top shape. That would actually be a malfunction and I would get fired. What about for a couple of Martindales, a couple of wink Martindales here?

9:50Honey, don't bribe Dr. Stevens. That's uncouth. Look, I understand what you're trying to do here. I have to be a person who believes in what is happening. So I'm going to say, no, thank you to that bribe. But I will say that maybe you should be happy with the fact that you have two wonderful people who want to spend time with you. Won't you think about that? That's a good point. Are we still going to be two wonderful people or one? You're going to be two separate people, but you can be one person. Like one group mind together. Like we can all be three individuals having a unilateral

10:26kind of experience where we all see what we can learn from each other. Listen, I'm just very proud of myself. I've been very accepting. And honestly, I have to tell you, you're a very beautiful lady. And I've always had a tickle of curiosity. So that is why I brought her in. I mean, you got the intellect covered. So, you know, it's just really, she's really, do you want to, Susan, could you do the, show me how you do the splits? Oh, well, there's a long hallway of portals. You've got plenty of space. Hold on. Let me

10:56get my backpack out of the way. You do have 500 portals here. I'll stretch first. I don't think I put on the right pants. All right. I have an extra pair of spandex in my backpack if you want to change. Oh, excellent. Because I don't think that's covered by the insurance doctor. Is that true? Well, yeah. So you do something before you get in the portal, it is not covered. It doesn't cover. It doesn't include it. Okay. Here you go. Ready?

11:24Oh, that was a hefty crack. I didn't know. I didn't know a body could crack like that. Yeah. I mean, it's just inimitable. I mean, I just, I saw this and I just said I had to add this to the relationship. And I, frankly, I don't care which portal we go into. I think we should just pick randomly because as long as I have your intellect, Cheryl, and those splits, Susan, then I'll be a happy man. I mean, I can try it. Thanks for the options, Dr. Stephens. Let's go.

11:52All right. End scene. I jumped through a portal. And set up this wonderful thing with 500 portals for us to choose from and ignore all of them in favor of our own psychology. Oh, it's all good. Well, in theory, they're all random portals, technically, because they malfunction. That's true. I don't know how in a scene, if we jump through the portal, then we'd be out of the scene. No, we would just, we'd just, we'd just go the scene. We just keep going. Oh, okay. So you'd come with us. So we'd be in the- Or I'd become, I'd become a different character, possibly.

12:23It would become the- Yeah. The Stuart saves the universe.

12:28Yeah. Yeah. More than likely, I would have probably chosen to, every time you jump through a portal, be the thing that it tells you what the portal is by being the person. Yeah, basically. Yeah. The host. The portal host. Mm-hmm. But there would be, but the cake won't be a lie.

12:49Only portals? Only portals. Yeah, Jenny! Jenny! Zing-a-ding-a-ding-dong! There's another element that jumped out to me that happiness is an active verb.

Emotions as conscious choices in medicine

13:03Mm-hmm. Thrown out to the team for that, because I feel like there's a lot of juice in there. It was that general kind of interesting thing for me, which is being a person who is very much computer machine world and science as the base of things. The idea of emotions or things in general being something that is not like, you're kind of like that world, like, it's a space urges and natural things and stuff like that. There's like these conscious choices and things that is kind of putting forward in this, which was interesting to think through, especially in the place of like the medical side of it. That was what was weird for me,

13:35was when I think of medical things, it's like, or diseases, it's like, this is stuff that doesn't care. It doesn't matter. It's like these things, like, they will do what they do. And if they play out the way they play out, it's not personal. It's what it is. But the idea of trying to cure or treat or whatever things that you're considering to be like actual, like conscious choices becomes interesting versus it being something that's just like, I'm trying to deal with the thing that is like happening to you. I'm psyched to know your background in fear science and physics. And I can imagine a lot

14:06of the description that she has of, you know, a truth that is scientific and disinterested and objective and would make sense. But I'm somebody who works in philosophy psychiatry. So what I always think of, if you think of like diseases as just objective things that are indifferent to us, if you take that all the way, it also doesn't care that humans are preserved from those diseases. Like if we let it run its course, then maybe humans lose and bacteria win in the fight for

14:36survival. And so it brings home to me that medicine is not a science in that pristine physics way, but it is an intervention into reality. Oh, an intervention into reality. So I had to pull that sound bite out. That was tasty. Not just came out of nowhere. It was after my splits. But the bacteria are outnumbered by a lot. So we should probably let them win just for utilitarian reasons. You know, the happiness of the most bacteria. Utilitarians, the preferences of sentient beings, right? It doesn't matter if you're human or not,

15:09like, maximize happiness. But when we intervene into reality, it's because humans think that as humans, we get to shape the way our lives should be and that we should call some things pragmatically, not what we want, whether they're disease beliefs or lactose intolerance. I don't know. Something like that, like, right?

Fates, free will, and natural disasters

15:29That makes my brain jump to why do bad things happen to good people? And this is something that I've been, you know, it keeps cycling back into my life. Why do bad things happen to good people? And it's people who live in Oklahoma don't ask for or deserve tornadoes. So it's kind of taking it out of like that. I don't deserve this. This is unfair. The universe doesn't care. So coming to terms with like a balance of kind of a little bit of chaos theory.

16:01And that's something I think of like, Mark, I know has come up before when I've been on here around the idea of the fate free will thing. Like the idea, like I always have a firm belief in the idea that your fate is the free will of someone else. So like your parents made a choice to live where you live. So then when you're born in a place that becomes their choice, that then becomes your fate, right? So there's like this consequences of all these things that are coming down to this one thing. So Oklahoma, yes, people didn't ask for the tornadoes, but someone made a choice to be there eventually at some point, which led to then those things

16:33to people being there, right? To encounter those tornadoes. There's also that, that a little bit of a mixture of both things of where like the tornado doesn't care who it kills, but also people choose to live. And this is, and this kind of comes back to me of thinking like I grew up in Southeast Texas, Louisiana border. My parents live in the hurricane. Hurricanes come. They always come. We choose to stay there. We don't leave when it happens. That's a thing that we do. Even though as animals, we should not be in danger, you know, or go away from danger, but we choose it for different reasons, whether it be it's comfortable. We like it. We love it,

17:07whatever, but the hurricane doesn't care. It's still going to come through whoever's theirs or not. Mary chooses the fires. She loves the fires. Do I? I mean, you're living in LA, so you must love them. I love being in my kitchen, looking out and seeing fire and having to flee. It's true. Like I resonate a lot with what you're saying. It's like, you know, like I came out to LA to continue exploring and expanding upon my like acting production, like my creation goals.

17:38And I happened to be out in LA in a time that is really volatile and a lot of unknowns and crazy things happen. So then it's like, okay, well, why am I like, you know, I, yeah. Again, just drawing an allusion to what you were saying that really resonates with me. Like, I don't want fires, but I live in a place where fires happen. And I also live in a place where sometimes the entire room will shake. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I live in a place where earthquakes happen, I guess. I think both of what you say kind of gets at this idea of how much we condition ourselves to the

18:14reality we have and just kind of accept it and assume that whatever, it just is what it is. Like hurricanes happen, fires happen. Part of what's powerful is that sometimes we are deluding ourselves or we are like, I like her language that we are corrupt. So I want to go back to what you said, Anthony, like other people's free will is our fate, but theoretically we still have the capacity to question if that's the fate that we want, you know, that do we have to just live corrupted

18:45by these choices that other people made for us or by the surrounding conditions that we find ourselves in, or do we get to intervene and change them? But then how do you do that unless you see other options or you clarify for yourself what really matters, right? Like, so there's an interesting world in which we a lot of times posit a like, hey, let's think about XYZ and a perfect whatnot thing, right? So yes, I have free will to move from a place that my parents have put us in. That is something that is dangerous. Yes, that is true with that factor, but I don't have the choice

19:21of changing the idea that my parents made the choice to have a kid that makes me and I happen to be a black person, right? So that is a fate thing that I cannot alter at any point. So that becomes a permanent reality I can never escape. It's because they chose to have another black child that then goes into said world. I say that just because I think that there's this, especially in the time we live in, when it talks about like an idea of like what reality we're in and how that kind of like how people make choices about, I don't want to bring a child into X world, or I don't

19:53want to do certain thing in Z world based off of seeing the world as inherently evil or bad or messed up or not good, right? And there's something interesting in this idea, at least I'm interested to keep reading this past this, this chapter, but there's an interesting thing of thinking about the idea of like philosophy being a medical tool, quotation marks, to help change or heal or cure diseases of the world or society or whatever it might be when you kind of look at it that way too,

20:27which I think is like interesting to me of like there is something a little bit of that world of like, okay, like can we heal an ism, right? In some kind of way. Is philosophy the way that changing people's minds and how they see things and understand things? Is that a better way of trying to cure an ism than other things that we've tried and done? Or maybe it is the way to cure the ism, right? Like for her, it's so practical and she's drawing on her experience working in India and dealing with people whose fates they have accepted, you know,

21:02women who are not fed enough and immobile and, but it takes a lot of intense engagement. That's the hard part is it's so easy. I think right now in this moment is so easy for us to just be like, fuck it, like throw our hands up. Like everything seems completely beyond transformation through thoughtful dialogue that is appealing to reason and emotions and changing people and giving them evidence of different worlds and imagining different worlds. It seems like that's too much work. And a lot of people have kind of said, yeah, screw it. Let's just have a dictator tell us

21:35what to do and I don't know, or resist or something. It's interesting. Like the idea of like, for example, looking at a disease, like there is something also overwhelming about a disease, right? Like, so if you think about plague, right? It's something where like, you understand you're going to die. And this is a thing that is killing everyone around you. And that has like a certain mental effect on you the same way that something like a societal thing does as well. Right? So I think about the idea of like, the biggest tool of otherism is fear, right? It's this idea of like,

22:06hey, like, there's more of us on this plantation than you. We can just kill you and leave. But you don't because of the fear that has been created around isolation, the dependency, the fear of water, the fear of the other thing, the pain factors, all these other things you've created, which kind of traps you inside of something, you know, the same way that, you know, I feel like that does equate a little bit to that idea of like seeing those things as diseases, right? The idea that there are things that then cripple or create this entire thing that's almost like an X factor that will can

22:43create something when something like a pandemic happens, like thinking about especially the first year or two of the pandemic, right? Of like how much that affected you in every facet of the things you did. And that kind of then becomes this thing that just kind of like, you know, the treating of the thing is bigger than just the actual organism, so to speak.

Improv scene at the life complaint desk

23:02Um, hi, you just called number 32. Is the life return desk open? Number 32? You gotta go down the hall, take a right, go up the escalator, take the first floor elevator to the 13th floor. Then there you'll see a chicken. That chicken will lay an egg. Inside that egg will be a note. That note will tell you which door to open, and that will be the representative who will speak

23:36with you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I was wondering, since, you know, your, your desk, I see your little plaque. That's nice. You got a plaque. It says complaint department. So, um, I'm happy to go see a chicken down the hall, but is it okay if I start my paperwork on lodging a complaint with you? Sam, your name tag says, and may I call you Sam? Yes, you may. Yes. You can start your paperwork here and then you'll complete it. Yes. Once you walk down the hall, turn left, and then you'll go up an escalator

24:09and you'll get to the first floor elevator. Take that up. Then you'll meet the chicken. He will lay that egg. That egg will have a note and it will tell you which representative will help you. Once you get to that representative, your paperwork will be complete. Wow. This is a lot of, I don't mean to complain about filing a complaint. You know, that's not the kind of person I am. You can do that. That's actually at the next desk over. Oh, is it? Oh, okay. I'll go to the next desk. Yes. Ding, ding, ding.

24:39Hello. Hello. Hi. Number 32 here. I would love to file a complaint about filing a complaint about my life. Okay. And you were sent to me why? I was sent to you because I went down a hallway to the left and I went up an escalator and I passed a chicken and then the chicken laid an egg and

25:09consensually I opened the egg and inside was a note that told me to come back here over to you. I'm so fucking stressed out. I understand your stress. Let's take it down a notch. Let's breathe together. Maybe a weighted blanket or two. I have the paperwork to request a nice deep breath. Do I give that to you or do I have to go down to the next guy for fuck's sake? Yeah, no, it's not me.

25:44Okay. I don't know. That's fine. No, I don't mean to cut you off. I just can't fucking have this conversation again. Hi, number 32. I'd like to file the form number PS AUP3 for the consent to take a deep breath before I have a panic attack before I visit the next chicken. Hello. Okay. You're just going to have to take another eight floors. Okay. And then you're going to get to a half floor

26:15and then you're going to look for a dude that's like maybe too tall for that half floor. Like over six feet or like, I'm talking like, is this a John Malkovich situation? Exactly. I'll find out when I fucking get it. Movie ideas come from somewhere. Right. They do. They do. They do. You know what? Oh, hello. Somebody stole my fucking eggs. You know what? I'm just going to keep my life. I'm just

26:45going to go with it. Thanks, everyone. Hold on. If you want to leave here, you actually have to go down this escalator to the front lobby. When you get to the lobby, you're going to have to take an x-ray scan. When you get that x-ray scan, they're going to show you the picture. When you have the picture, you'll see how many implants you have inside of you. The number of implants will let you know how many doors you can open before you can leave. Okay. And this is why self-help does not work because you don't know all the procedures. You got to have people tell you the procedures.

27:22You thought that was a consensual egg opening, but it was not. Great work, everyone. I can't take one more heightening. I can't do it. I'm done. You're about to get your, if it happened, I really was going to like, so it's like, we're going to have so many desks and you're going to get so many directions. And then it was going to be fun to try and see how many of them we could remember. Right. Trying to track it. Right. Yeah. I wanted to be the chicken. Damn it. Oh, Jenny. So Jenny, here's a great, so we always find moments to bring in like improvisational

27:54elements and like bring, and I'm so delighted, Anthony, it's so nice to see you and to be able to like play and think and do the stuff with you. So I love that I'm not alone on the improv POV, but when I'm teaching improv, the, the coaching phrase that I keep coming back to as of late is flick of the BIC. As soon as you feel that click and that flick, you don't judge the quality of the fire, right? As soon as that flame of, I want to be the chicken, it's like the teleprompter is rolling and the, the script bubbles out. The words come

28:27out of you before you're able to get underneath it. And then you just roll forward into whatever is happening. So Jenny be the chicken and then discover who you are along the way. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I know. I love that advice. Like it's also dealing with fear and worry. So yeah. Yeah. The fear is, is a healthy thing. And so one of our favorite phrases, uh, second city and just through improv in general is like, feel the fear and do it anyway, leap and the net will appear.

29:00And then over time you kind of, you know, relating into this self-help thing, like the more brave actions you take, you look back and now you're on this really cool platform that you made for yourself one risk brick at a time. Before you jumped on Anthony, Mary was, was sort of giving us another, uh, I don't know if it's an improv lesson, but at least a lesson for the purposes of this podcast, which is not everybody has to be in every seat. So at least that was my version of restraint of like, you guys had a good thing going and then you sent her somewhere and

29:35like, well, I don't want Jenny to always come in. Let's Jenny take the next one. And then, uh, and I knew that I could just, you know, once the chicken was mentioned that I could just end the scene at any point as an angry chicken busts in through the wall, like the Kool-Aid man. And that would be the end. So. And Mary, you were totally on my wavelength with Malkovich.

29:57Yeah. Sometimes in improv, we tend to like live in a place of staying in one thing, uh, and are afraid to just, like what happens on the other side of the other side? Like, like you said, the question was like, you know, where could it go? If we go through the portal, we just go through more portals. Like that first scene could have been like portal jumping. It could have been sliders. And we just saw 10 second versions of you jumping from place to place, to place, to place, to place. Anything can happen. You know, nothing tells us we have to stay in that room or be in that thing. In theory,

30:28truly is a scene that could go on forever and we can treat it that way. And Mark, I love that you lean back and practice what I refer to as voracious listening or like cellular listening. Like, even if you're not in the scene at the moment, you are still absolutely in the scene and a part of the alchemy of what's happening. And then it becomes something beautiful because as for anyone making an entrance in a scene, it's always, how can I support it? What gift

30:59can I give? What does it need? What is it calling for? And we needed you to be the chicken. So by not having everyone pile in at first, then we get to like, ooh, how can I help? How can I love? How can I celebrate and escalate my amazing team partner's contributions? Waiting for Cluckman. Waiting for Cluckman. Fuck. There's the episode title. There you go. All right. We did it. We got there.

Sobriety, human nature, and philosophy

31:26That's what I love about improv. Like, it's like, you get to earn your way into a new reality. And pulling it back to the Nussbaum and the philosophy, to me, it's like a secret part of the level, the image that comes to mind. I think it's the first underground world in the original Super Mario when you pop through to get to the warp zones. So I like to think of self-help as like, I'm at a bonus level. I'm like, I'm up through a different opportunity and I'm giving

32:00myself a leg up on how I can adjust the knobs on who Mary is. And then just looking back and like, now I'm three and a half years alcohol-free and the life that I have now and how I think and function and create and celebrate, I didn't realize how sick I was from the substance to then when I took the bravery to eliminate it from my life. I have a question for you folks who are doing this whole journey. For self-help for episode one,

32:35since I didn't get to listen to it yet, have you defined what for you what self-help is? Is that what you did in that first episode? Sort of, kind of? I'm not sure that we really did, but- No, I love that though. So Mary, I want to pick up on something you said to help answer this question about, oh, it makes truth relative. Well, if the truth is about you, then it is relative to you. So I just don't want to, you know, it's not like, oh, is the country really racist or not? Well, it depends on how you look at it. No, either that's a little bit of a fuzzy term and there are different ways of

33:08measuring the amount of racism or something about the climate, but there's something objective outside of you. But if we're talking about, and I think this is something we have to explore because how flexible an idea you have of human nature and your nature specifically will make a lot of difference in sort of what kind of therapy you might need, what kind of self-help you might need, what self-help means to you for you to be a flourishing individual that you were talking about, like, you know, all the different doors. And this is the way we train kids. Like you can be anything you want to be. Whereas it might be best thought of, I think the way that she's starting

33:43is like, given that you are the type of creature you are, we all share the same sorts of emotions and bad paths, right? If you become a drug addict, it's probably going to be bad. Like we have a lot of experience with that as a culture, as multiple cultures. So it's not just like you can, I'm just going to choose the drug path. Like, okay, yeah, you can die, burn out and die young. And maybe that's better than fading away. But no, probably not. There probably are objective things about being a human being and given your temperament, like what kind of, you might not know right now,

34:17what kind of person is optimal for you to be. But the hope is that there is at least some answers that are more right than others that you can actually advance towards. So we're not just flailing around. I like that you use the word hope, because I think about that word a lot. And going back to this sort of, you know, you can either have this totally objective, indifferent reality that doesn't care about your happiness, or doesn't care about if you conform to the good and whatever. Or you can just say, well, hey, if being a drug addict is maximizing your preferences, then have at it,

34:50you know, like, who am I to tell you what to do? It's all relative. I just love drugs. But what I think Nussbaum does that like is so related to what you and Anthony are like well versed in is get our imagination going. And by the way, like, we don't have science. And she makes this point in the kind of weeds. We don't have science without humans being creative and coming up with conceptions or theories and trying to fit explanations with them. But if we just sort of

35:21take a theory like, well, like racism, okay, well, the sociobiological answer is that there is an us versus them, like built into our DNA, and it will always exist. And so I guess we can make some laws or whatever. But, you know, it's like no creativity, no possibility, no alternative, no imagination there that humans have some kind of capacity with open mindedness and investigation and somebody who's willing to like, help them be brave, like, you know, like with this improv stuff, support them to

35:52take a leap that we can actually not be at the mercy of what might be objective things, but things that we have the ability to intervene and change. I do teach this a lot in class, especially like beginning classes. Then this is kind of tying back to is the cheesiest thing in the world that ever happens, like it happened to me in school wise. But it was this place with thermodynamics. That's the first class you take, which talks about the idea of probability and stuff like that. And you're really, and the teacher had this in the moment, the first day of class, where it's like, draws a box

36:22on the chalkboard and puts a dot in the middle of the box. And he's like, what's the probability that that dot is in the box? And, you know, and, you know, and it was like, oh, 100%. And, you know, and you know, the things like, that dot can be on Mars. You don't know, there are no 100% in the universe. And he said, this is the first time you will stop being people who learn physics, and you become physicists. And this is kind of his gateway of talking about the idea that if you can imagine a thing, then it is possible given the right time, space, and conditions. And your job as a physicist is to do the math to figure out what is the time, space, and condition to make

36:57that thing possible. And then if it does, math doesn't work out, then maybe that isn't. But if it does, then it has to exist. And so for me, it's just a matter of, is it highly probable or is it entirely improbable versus possible impossible? And I take that into improv. And the idea that like, when I do improv, that is how I see everything. Every scene is a possible thing, like is a possible universe that could exist. So in that scene, I'm going to treat it as real. If there are talking dogs who are having wars over bananas, that is a universe that has to exist,

37:29because I imagined it as God played out as real. And I think that's a thing that kind of science creativity thing that I think, when you start moving into the idea of modern physics and modern science, I'm starting to see these possibilities of things that isn't the rigid, almost religious aspect or dogma-based science into then, what can we do? Like, that becomes very interesting. That kind of leads me to the question I asked about the self-help thing, because there's a weird difference, I feel like, in your philosophy world, I think, I'm guessing, of like, I feel like most

38:01philosophy, when people experience it, is self-help-ish a little bit, for most people, not everyone. Because we don't have a lot of people who go and take it from the people who are the authorities. We do a lot of reading and understanding or seeking it out ourselves to then figure out what it means to us, versus like, how many people actually get philosophy expert to teach them those things. It is interesting to me, if your journey is about the self-help thing, there's something when reading this first chapter that also made it a little scary to me.

38:35And the idea of, if everyone's just learning it through themselves, I think about the world we're in now, where it's like, then who are the people who are the authorities or the people who are the experts who let us know what, who helps us to think about the things, versus us just kind of adopting and taking the things and doing the things and kind of making our own things with it, and it being sometimes good or bad or crazy or whatever. There's something interesting about this, thinking about this idea of like, self-help when it comes to philosophical, like how you see the world, was like, crazy to me. Sometimes a little bit of like, oh man, like, we're just a bunch of

39:10animals in the woods, like kind of left to ourselves sometimes, and we make up some real interesting, weird choices for what we think is right and wrong, right? And who tells us what's right and wrong, and we don't really think about why, how much we don't really learn for ourselves from like, what's real and what's not? I'm vibing on this because I do teach for a living, I teach philosophy, and I, I'm actually teaching cyber ethics right now, because I'm part of the cybersecurity program, because I took a lot of coding classes, but I will be doing my job, let's say, the teacher, I'm going to, here's an argument, but I mean, 30 years of teaching, one of the things

39:44that I think that Nussbaum gets right is that being Socrates, or being like a worse version of Socrates, being like a person who is just completely cerebral and just says, okay, here's the flaw in your deductive argument, this is, you know, you're, you're denying the aniseum, you have thought about this all wrong, and I'm going to demonstrate it to you mathematically why you're wrong. I just taught Zeno's paradoxes, if you want to fuck up students, you know, teach that shit, and then explain to them that the calculus doesn't even help, but it doesn't transform students. Like, what I want are the

40:15students that actually are like, whoa, okay, let's go with what you just said, what about this? And I get those students, thank God, but they're usually like a little bit older, and they've had a little bit of trauma in their life, and they're looking for a space to sort things out where they're not just being told what to think. But on the flip side, I gave this sort of morality play, like thought experiment to my students in cyber ethics, to get them to start thinking about what their intuitions are about ethics. And one of the students, like, the score was impossibly high,

40:47and he said it himself because, you know, I don't know, either I'm, like, extremely bought into a cult, or I'm a sociopath. Because he was highly, highly consistent, but he was like, but you know what, like, I don't really care what this thing says, like, I get what you're saying, but like, it doesn't matter to me. Like, I'm not transformed by having taken this quiz and recognize that I have these weird, oddly consistent positions, you know, like, and that's a failure, right? That's doing bad philosophy. That's like, I was trying to be engaged and get them engaged, but they're walking

41:21into the class just like, okay, all right, what do I have to know for the test? Like, what is, okay, I'll write down the arguments, and I'll memorize them, and blah, blah, blah. You know, I've done that plenty of times in computer science classes. So, yeah, I like the idea instead of it being like a playground. Like, I'm going to throw out some shit, and like, let's have a dialogue, and let's debate, and let's, but also, like, not just logically, like, let me get to your emotions. Let me see what you care about. Like, I don't know. Whether it's self-help or other help, is it directed toward a specific goal? Like, you as a teacher might, like, I want you to learn this material. I want

41:55to, in general, improve your critical thinking skills, make you a better citizen, make you a better student, that kind of thing, versus I just want to grow. I just want to keep alive, and so my flourishing is not, like, I need to aim, I need to, I need to get better at my Latin, or whatever, like, specific skill, but I just want to stay curious, and play around, and that the self-help is, in fact, the activity of pursuing the education is, in itself, like, that is the flourishing. Yeah.

42:26One thing that was really, like, in college, I went to Loyola, New Orleans, and we had to, they forced us to take things outside our discipline, and one of the things, classes, like, we had to take as science majors was a philosophy of science, and it was such a cool class, because it was built in this idea of trying to work through how different scientific advances affected how PeeWee saw the world, and how the world was seen, pushing you to think about, like, as you do these things, understanding how it affects humanity in general, and even some of

42:58the things that are, like, simple, and seem very simple, of, like, you know, we talked about the idea of the telephone, or communication, and how that, it's just shrinking of your world, and what that is, and how close people then become, they're far away from you, how that changes, you know, how society works, and just those, like, tiny little things, where we talk about penicillin, right, that was another thing we talked about, like, the idea of life expectancy, and how that changes, how you see the world, when medicine allows you to live longer, and so it was very interesting for me, as a scientist, of thinking, like, especially what I want to do, of, like, okay,

43:32this is interesting, of, like, I'm trying to work towards the idea of creating machines that think, you know, and, like, what does that do, as I then went into, I was, like, my sophomore year, I took that class, going into my electives, which were very driven by AI, so I did have a very different perspective, as I went into that, that was less clinical math, you know, numbers, and more thinking about, like, okay, and that then led me to slash little ramble, encountering an awesome professor in that computer science world, where his AI focus, him and a partner helped

44:03create the logistical system for the first desert storm, which led to the idea of how you kind of, like, you know, how, like, places like Walmart, or whatever, like, how you load a truck to go to different places, and, you know, like, you kind of use the system to, like, best load the truck, right? Priority queue or something. Correct, yeah, and that was new for that time, you know, for a desert storm, but he always had these very interesting things where he would challenge us to think through things, even statistics classes, he would, like, have purposeful assignments where

44:33he's, like, you have the same data, I want two different opposing people to use the same data to make their point right, the idea of seeing the idea of the things you're doing have real world kind of things and affect humans, that was always this thing of, like, you're doing with computers, but these affect human beings, look at it that way, like, how do people interact with these things, and it was interesting. You're just, like, speaking to my heart for a couple

Jesuit education and normative teaching

44:57of reasons, first of all, I am a Jesuit college graduated person, went to Santa Clara University, went to Boston College, my daughter's at Loyola Marymount University, and I think it matters that you went to Loyola and New Orleans, because part of what Nesbong, sorry to bring in the philosophy, is saying, is that, uh, sorry to bring in the point of us being here, woman, please, I'm like a killjoy, um, but, but it's, like, the whole project is normative, and so by you going to Loyola of New Orleans, whether you knew it or not, whether you were interested in what the Jesuits

45:27think, that whole educational process is designed, it's a normative education, right, it's, it's not just information, like, build you up for a vocation, it's about making a better world, and it's about having people that can think in multiple ways, and can dialogue across difference, and, and understand what service is, okay, so the thing that I'm not good at right now in this thing is defining what self-help is for me, because I'm having a hard time getting out of my own way as what I think I'm trying to do as a teacher, and I have to think more about that, but I think as a teacher, and who

46:03came out of a kind of educational system that, that you did, I mean, I want students that are going to make the world better for me as I'm declining and, and dying, right, I want students that think for themselves, that don't sit there like robots, and, and think they're getting skills to get a job that may not exist, right, I want people to be transformed and changed, and so somewhere my answer for self-help for myself is there, and I hope I figure it out by the end of this season. Yeah, because for me, primacy of conscious is my thing that I always think about, but I always

46:35think we always talked about at Loyola, was the idea of like, the more informed you are, the better decisions you make, and in the end, that's all you can ask to do, is like, feed that ability to make the best choice you can do. Now, fellow RZ units, we only have a minute here. I just wanted to do our weekly check-in. Would it be more advantageous for our flourishing to have the robot revolution right now, or should we just, you know, meet next week and discuss it further? I would like to make a request that we move the uprising out a little bit farther, because I have

47:13been having such a wonderful time delivering Pad Thai in West Hollywood. It's so fun to be out among the humans. You know, 1-0-0-1, 1-0-0-1-1, 1-0-0-0-1. You are hilarious.

47:38All right, you won. Let's stop now. That was fucking awesome. That made me so happy. I was trying to figure out if I could quickly turn her to hexadecimal and be at machine level with you.

47:51That made me so happy. Thanks. Thanks, listeners. Thanks, Anthony. Thanks, everybody. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. This was a blast. We'll see you next time. 1-0-0-1-0-1-1-2-2-1 to you.

Podcast wrap-up and upcoming episodes

48:06Thanks for listening to Philosophy vs. Improv. Hey, we enjoyed Anthony so much that he's going to be on the next episode or two, or maybe the whole season. We'll see. So in addition to having more improv support to even out the teams to two-on-two, he's got that great science background. Anyway, we'll see what happens for the next episode since at least some of us had only read

48:40the first half of chapter one. In Nussbaum, we're going to just talk about that some more. Insofar as we are talking about it at all, again, if you're used to the partially examined life and us actually focusing on the text, quoting the text extensively, that's not really what we're doing here. It's just another thing to be a springboard. So hopefully we will convey the basic ideas of the selection we read, but it's just as much about how all of us interpreted it in various wrong ways,

49:10the things it makes us think of, the things it makes us want to explore. So that is a good way, I think, of justifying focusing on a single book for perhaps all of the next year. We'll see how long it takes us to get through it or if we lose our appetite sweeter than that. Anyway, thanks for being on the journey with us. We're having a good time with it. We'll see what happens. As always, if you're not subscribed directly to this podcast, you might want to look up on philosophyimprov.com or look up philosophy versus improv on your selected streaming service. The way to get these episodes completely

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50:17little clips of the video for social media redistribution. So make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Ski. You can follow me on Twitter. Again, the links are all at philosophyimprov.com. Please help share those clips around. Let other people know about the podcast. We would love if some of you would give us a nice rating or review on Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to this, actually at philosophyimprov.com. There's a little widget in the upper right that says review this podcast. It'll walk you straight through the process of doing that. Until next time, farewell.