Walk into the id ten t, podcast number nine hundred and forty seven yes id ten. She is fully a thing you can follow up: twenty on Instagram id ten t on Twitter, the id 10tf S, Liz coming back in November. Third, Fourth Orange County fairgrounds that we have now it's banned soon, comedians in the comedy, tent and then Comicon stuff and there's some Edm, so that'll all be announced within the next handful. Maybe like two months, maybe a little less than two months, I will have our our full line up announced so good. I do tend to dot com, not just for info, but also making shirts and fun stuff. Now that I would want to buy as a consumer so so I'm just making it 'cause. I want this stuff to exist, so road id ten t dot com, there's a couple shirts on there more on the way some pins coming and then also I've actually may need the mugs that we use on talking dead. So the bug you see on the coffee table that we drink out of every week, I've made those they are now available at id ten t dot com, so go

check those outs. That would be great. But let's talk about some other people now MIKE amend rights. I have them you teacher at a latino Focus Charter School in St Paul MN. I've been listening. Your podcast, since the nervous days is in inspired me to follow my dreams and make things happen for myself. To that end, I am building a band from the ground up and we are in need of instruments. I have set up a day, there's choose to fund a new concert, Bass Drum and need help getting word out, would like to donate to our project visit donorschoose dot, Org slash ACC band, but if your listeners, like brass woodwind, percussion instruments to our school, they can contact me at am amend Mnandi at Caesar. Travisschool dot com will take newer, used instruments, please help bring and to the school nice. Yes, I support this MIKE well done good for you for making your thing about other people doing it for the kids. Also Craig Sheldon rights after taking Christmas

so harden taking a charge to do that. I think I've always put off. I did another one. This makes me very happy because I decided to write and draw my very own web comic and I put all twenty four pages online for free anyone can read it. It's a comedy spoof on the who superhero genre full of colorful cape features in a sideways look at what it really takes to be a modern day. Superhero join Hank Holtz is the titular for planetary. Oh in a comic that dares to ask the question: are peep really worth saving how come jobs always arrive after the hero? What do you think when you're, where is dating the son of your arch nemesis, is currently at his tumblr page Crags Sheldon, DOT, tumblr dot com? This episode is Alan. Called which I was nervous about me now and all that The man's an icon I mean he's just amazing mash, it's been so many great movies. He hosted scientists american frontiers for like fifteen years, the man loves science, he's a guy he's a guy with

comedy training who of science and he wrote a great book, but I listen to the audio version of 'cause. He reads it and I listen to the whole book before the cast it the whole book. Oh I'm so proud of Maine. Anyway, the book is called- if I understood you, I have this look on my face and it's all about communication and improving indication and there's a big threat about improving commune patient through improv taking improv classes, and it's just great he's a good egg, Alan Alda, and this is really honored to talk to him, and then he asked me questions about the end of the podcast 'cause he's starting a podcast too. So I was very happy to went to his hotel room in Beverly Hills and we banged out a podcast and it was an absolute honor and enjoy. If I understood you,

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this episode of the id ten t, podcast number nine hundred and forty seven with Mister AL called Akti. Oh now, communicating that I would like you to roll the thing before I forget before you roll the thing. Katie pause, rolling thing, I added something at the end of this podcast of the podcast will sound like it's done, but just stick around because I go read something at the end so and I'll explain I'll, explain all that at the end, all right, re roll, the thing initiating id ten t protocol

luggage. We have one Houston, we have what this is good. It's nice to know there. You have a change of clothes yeah in fresh underwear into the second half of the show. I forgot this This is a sleepover show, so we're going to be here for a couple of days and might close enough with him like this yeah you sound, you could hide. I Shanda right now. I mean, as I said when you first came I listened to the I love listening to the audio version, because I like to hear I like to hear you

the story yeah rather than me just reading, reading roads and it was yeah. I can add to what what I think are the important inflections and things yeah, but also I I sort of what I imagine is the time and energy it takes to record. You know boy 'cause, it's like a six Sica six hour and fifteen minute book so it seemed like a lot longer than that 'cause. I did six hours a day. Well because you say everything a few times right right right, and then they don't really care. You know they want you to just get into one take, get the words out and talk for more than like two hours at a time. I always try to listen for all right. When did the author get tired and then, where is the pick up all the sound fresh right there? I think you you hear changed to suddenly the voice sounds like he's. Had a night's sleep it's all here for, but I I I love the book and for anyone who doesn't know it's all about station and it's all about Essentia Lee fan.

In a program at stony, Brook University, about communication right all the center for communicating science, which we started nine years ago and since then, we've trained in workshops, we've trained over eleven thousand scientists and doctors hey We and we do it in this unusual weights, but pretty unusual, which is to teach them improvisation exercises yeah. Well, you saw that in the book yeah, yeah, yeah and and and it it opens them up and at first they don't want to do it. It's amazing how many people are afraid of improvisation. The word scares them. They think it the first will they think it's comedy improvisation, which it isn't. It's just exercises that put you in touch with another person where you really read their face and read their body language and it it turns out. You can't really communicate with somebody

unless you observe them and know who that who are you talking to right? Are they getting it? What's their state of mind while you're talking to them? Well, I don't think were evolved, communicate through devices and communicate through you know, texting and emails and phones I mean like we. We need to connect with human beings is to face yeah. Well. Actually, the funny thing is that I've found that, once you get used to face to face communication, where you're aware more of what how the person is getting it, then you are what the perfect way to say it is you know it's communication is not, I think, of a great message and then I pour it into your head and then expect you to understand it. I have to know, what's happening in your head, so I can adjust what I'm saying right that kind of thing once you get used to that it actually effects the way you write for somebody who's. Not

there in time and space and all in what way I put the first sentence down, and I think what is this done to your brain? What it? What state of mind, are you in now so now I know what how to begin the next sentence. I mean I actually do that when I right when when you were listening to me read my book, that was the product of me sentence by sentence figuring out how I could make it easy for you to follow what I was saying and and keep it interesting he right, so it can still but surprising. Well, you know there are so many things in the book that I just kept going. Yes, yes, yes, because Then I stay here. I mean first of all, it's all about science, communication and, as I said before, an well, I hope

about all kinds of community. It's all kinds of your mothers and daughters and fathers and sons in law, business, all kinds of things, but go ahead. Well, it just that yeah, I'm literally in pre production right now on a science show where the th, the thesis of is, can we make a science show that that tells human stories so that people who wouldn't necessarily watch a science show will go? Oh wow, that's this is why science and technology are important, and this is you know, the humanity actually. There is a ray of hope in humanity and it's not all toxic shit, there's so many so many human angles to come in on in science. First of all were you just describing the needs that we have for this new thing. That was just ordered the amazement that we might feel and hearing about the discovery or how it was accomplished, and the other thing is the story of the person who went through all the trials and hardship

of making the discovery, because these things don't just come out of the blue right. You don't go to. We can say now, I'm going to discover this is no element. You know there's a lot of not just hard work, but failure to failure is sometimes the most interesting part of it. How do you recover from the failure? It's not down that alley. How do you find the alley that it is down right? Those are real good stories- and all of that is almost always left out- I and what we had a workshop once where The nano scientist, the guy, who ran the Nano science division of this university, discovered with his graduate student, how to make the world's thinnest glass. It was one atom thick, oh yeah, yeah yeah. I remember that in the book yeah yeah yeah and he he wrote about they get picked up by one journal. Then he took the workshop.

And realize that it's an interesting human story that he discovered how to make this thin glass by accident. He didn't realize what he was stumbling into Mmhm, the next time. You told the story: it got picked up by newspapers and websites across the United States and Great Britain, and then I got calls from people wanting to invest money in it. You know it it it also. The other human interesting is is in the interim. He had been given a spider in the Guinness Book of World records for the thinnest glass, so it had two elements to human elements. Now they made all the difference, we're interested in things that happened by accident at some new view of nature and all

this site is, is not in the position to realize, because they're not thinking about the person who's at the other end of the communication right you're thinking about. I did this to the chemicals and then I did that to the chemicals and that's how I got this result, but that's not the human part of it and we're interested in the human part. Well at least you can snag, is, with the human part, we're interested in the thing itself. At least I am I mean it's, you know. I think one of the things that's so interesting to me about everything. You've done is that it feels like you've just pursued things that are interesting to you. You know it improv in the 60s and then acting and then and then you do died in the 90s or you know. I love science, I'm going to I'm going to start telling science stories and communication, and so just kind going back. Where was this just part of foundational personality? Core of I've, just I'm going to pursue things that are interesting

Somehow it is I've been very lucky. They had them. The big luck I I had. I want two kinds of luck. One. Find is that I would have been happy just playing in good material with actors I respected. In front of an audience that got it, I actually had that formulation when I was in my 20s and I would have map reacting acting in Cleveland or Saint Louis, who didn't matter to me. So that's a good bit of luck in the matter what happens? You're, ok, yeah, the other good bit of luck was I got famous and rich doing mash that worked out pretty well organized and but if it it happened. I was lucky to have the attitude that I still have. I can it's amazing, my wife, Arlene laughs at me, because up even into my 50s,

I had a list of jobs that if everything fell, fell apart, that I would not do certain jobs laying asphalt. I just don't want to do that. I drive a cab right now. I guess Ruben? Maybe I because they don't treat their drivers that well and what I read, but I would I I was ready to go back. To whatever I had to do to start over because of the original lucky idea that mattered was doing something that interested me. That kind of mention- and it grew in a way that I really didn't expect into exploring what communication is, and I had the freedom to do that. Had the freedom to follow my nose because of the success of mash, and I still get to have the pleasure of act. And it my life is very happy number, I'm truly lucky because they get to do these things it really

use me and give me a feeling of growth yeah, but it but it, but also the idea how innovation occurs with interdisciplinary study. It's like it. You know just took the right listen which was you to have all this improv training to have all this acting training and experience to go. I wonder if there's a better way for enjoy ears and scientists to communicate. I know I'll take these tools that I've learned and and see if this doesn't well that that's what happened. But what happened? Was it wasn't in my head that I discovered that I discovered it in action and motion when I did the kind show, because I was interested in science and I wanted to learn from the scientists what they did and therefore I didn't want to just read an aeration. I wanted to talk with them and I knew I'd spend the whole day with them. If I was interviewing them, so I'd have a chance to really have them. Teach me

But then, when we were on camera, I realized, if I didn't, use the improvising skills and engage them in a conversational approach to this day they probably start to do little Lexi right and it wouldn't be as much fun. I wouldn't learn as much as my objective was to come out that day really understanding what they did. So if they started talking jargon to me, I just I just would stop them. I say I don't know what that means, meaning I grabbed one guy by the cheeks and. And he's one of the world's great set. Well, if you know some people are, can be very uncomfortable into it personally, and so how do you get their shields down and not get the to do to go into autopilot. I didn't find it that difficult, because I think, if you most science If you can see on your face that you really want to understand what they do, they really

going to tell you because they're proud of it there amazed at it, but they want to share that amazement with you. The other thing is: if somebody was a real stiff, he wouldn't be invited on the show right in us of it. That would be a little bit of scouting it out before hand, but you could see people come to life, sometimes people who probably came to life for the first time in front of a camera, because it's not often you have somebody in front of a camera who doesn't want you to say certain number of things, but once you to just get this him to understand it right, that's all I wanted so they kind of lit up at that and they have a good sense of humor most scientists, and you wouldn't you may not think so, but they are smart and one of the things about funny is smart,

yeah. Well yeah I mean I just you know. Obviously we just lost professor hawking a couple of days ago, the Lares he was, but I have this t shirt that has it hawking's face on and I've had it for like a decade, and it's has a quota, Is that says my goal is simple: it is the complete understanding of the universe, guys gotta Unix bunnies Cheeky's got a sense of humor, but I want to Wanna talk a little bit about. I met him once, but you didn't hear it was right here. She had seen a thing the opening night of a play I did, which I played Richard Feynman, the great american core is used and- and he was it took about five or six minutes to is- to exchange three sentences. Of course, with the machine head, but he was charming, you he hardly moved and yet he was Eve, on his face, he was expressing some of what he what he felt. Having seen the play, he like the play very much

and he was he was witty about it. I mean the idea that he still managed with just the tip of a finger to to change for and for decades decades I mean people with you know people without a fortune, don't tend to live to almost eighty. He was diagnosed with this. I think they said he would die it. Twenty wonders right, click to see, the six, the he he would have been a genius anyway, and we we know him. We know him partly. I mean, though, that the world knows him to some extent because he's a smart guy in the wheelchair, so there's a focus on his disability, but without the disability would have been just as much a genius. The only thing is with it was such an iconic thing for people who are not disabled, that I think it's stuck in their heads and became a

Beam, sure yeah, but he still had to exercise. In my opinion, he still had to exercise a great deal of courage and strength to be able to keep doing his work now slowed down by this. Having to can, I think what he did was. It would concoct it in his head and then lay it out, through dictation over and the wait. However, he was able to manipulate the machine and that that's a challenge really slows you down and you have to adjust to that- and I just I'm very interested in the dressing I, but the head of the day gave me a honorary degree at the University of Dundee Scotland last summer, and they say they knew what we wanted to say a few words, but you only have three minutes. It's a literally yeah so

show I I only have three minutes and I wanted so I thought I did tell you the secret of life, doesn't take very long. Damped, a revise, that's the whole thing, that's how nature does it evolution that the soon revise that's how we adjust to a new world with new digital world. We all have to keep adjusting it's. How we adjust to old age, things, get old and rusted become unscrewed and full office as we get older, and the only way you can keep going is by adapting and adjusting and revising the way you handle things. I mean in foundation of that is improv space I mean. Is it? Is it look how it changed my life? It changes everybody's life. Who does it? We just did a three day workshop in Israel,

israeli scientists, an american scientists who are going to be working together, and this helps you collaborate better. The common phrase we heard was this was a life changing experience now, while because Ian gene Experience this freedom and the pleasure of connection, connection without fear without anxiety, what is it? What is this person going to think of me without any of those thoughts, but just working together being in sync, physically and mentally, that that's a wonderful feeling, but people are afraid of it. I think you probably read the book and I

this workshop with actors, would, I say, we're gonna we're gonna do a workshop for a whole week, then at am when AL yeah. They all differ freaked out they they they really freaked out, because we're gonna do improvising for a week and one one woman who was an experienced actress and a good actress. She had thirty years experience on the stage she later told me. I was thinking of faking a heart attack I to get out in the well. It's the perfect way to to understand it would just because obviously most people are terrified of being humiliated. There's that of Oh my god, I'm going to go up, I don't know what I'm going to say. People are going to say, I'm dumb, I'm going to be embarrassed and you know shit the stage and run off and but I think they're up there and they realize you know it's your a team and if

together. We do. We don't even get to the point where they're doing scenes they do role playing and stuff, but they do that's role playing in situations that they're familiar with, but what the? What the improv exercises are very basic, early exercises. That put you in touch with the other person, and the funny thing is you can do things like this? Do the day without having to go to an improv class. If you really concentrate on observing the person you're talking to it gets kind of changes you Can you talk a little bit about what impressed when you I feel like in the book you mentioned you you did an improv of something to do with KEN. So I'm guessing it was early sixties. You were doing yeah yeah, and so what was the I've seen like at that time, because I am man I I I guess that that's sort of the beginnings of what kind of modern improv ended up become. It was around that time. Is that correct? I think so

I was in an improv company called Compass, which was an offshoot of the original compass in Chicago and from Compass in Chicago came second city, and by the time I was doing compass at Hyannis, port uh, Hinda Massachusetts, a second city had just opened a cow in New York? So second city was popular in New York and Chicago, but it was still the early days. I mean that this was well. It was around. It was the sixties. When John Kennedy was president stood still alive and we did a half. The show was sketches that we had developed during a we.

He'd do through improv, nothing was written, so that was an hour of stuff that we knew would work and we took into an intermission and before The information we give us headlines give us words things you want to see sketches on. Then we have a fifteen minute information to try to figure out what's choose. We would make up on the spot in front of the only two in the what we were going to do. We just say: okay, you could you do a you? Do the missile crisis was an amazing questions. Do do you do taxes collecting taxes, and do that that the old lady like to do I'll, be the salesman we do one hour of spot, improv improvisation and one of the things we did was a press conference where one of the one of us was. I guess it was Khrushchev at that time, yeah and the another one was. I was candid.

So the funny thing was we were in the hotel where and our cabaret was in the basement of the hotel in Hyannis Port, where Kennedy gave his real press conference. This is in the morning upstairs so he'd give the morning press conference, then it go get on his boat or whatever it is, and it I'd give a press conference and often the same reporters who were there in the morning working with him would downstairs asking me questions that had been in the. Paper you at night and what they were talking about, but you're improvising is Kennedy yeah. So, like I said, I had a way to get out of everything, but but it was fun and then coming off of that, What was the journey between that and then mash? Did you decide

you make a conscious decision like I think I wanted to television and film, or did you think you know all stick to theater? Was it just? Did you just sort of take it as it came alive for me, being an actor was being in the theater hi I didn't want to get to. I don't want to lose that learning opportunity to the theater gives you and I, and I just the I love being on the stage I still feel more comfortable on the stage. Can I do in front of the camera, but I I mean I've learned how to do it, but I, but I his love being on the stage and it should things just developed. I had I never had a plan. You know I think, a five year plans without with Russia and China they they never seem to work. Your people are always saying picture where you're going to be five years from now for what purpose yeah, because it's not what you're going to be. No, that's true, but I think at least I've-

it's good to sort of have some ideas and then but be flexible about whatever, because he obviously can't control anything yeah. Well, then that is the way I work I mean I have. I have an awful lot of that. I'm involved and I know word like it to go, but I'm also ready for to take turns that I don't expect. I think I think a good week, though, if things don't really work. Well, if you don't, if you know, if you're not ready to improve yeah and you during this period of time in the sixties, I know you're working with MIKE Nichols and your work with all these really amazing people. Are you? Are you just a zorbing your surroundings? At that point I mean when you go into something it sounds like with the amount of I miss the performed on your cell phone. Here's for just I just you, know personal, science, experiments and emotional science. Experiments is that, with that,

even back, then, are you working with MIKE Nichols and absorbing all of his energy or or what it will, of course. What's the experience, I don't think any but he would work with MIKE Nichols and not try to learn from the experience. He was a genius or you know what. If there are geniuses in show business, he was one yeah and I still remember things he said Challenge is. He gave me, and one of the most important ones is what we've been talking about, which is relating you know. He said Barbara Harrison tonight, wonderful actors, we would the scene in the apple tree and MIKE was directing it and he said, you're not relating relate more, I thought relating was bending over and put in my face in the other person's face and now relate more bent over further was a long time later. They realized

relating is being connected to the other person, and you can relate to them, even if your back is to them or their back, is to you and MIKE what MIKE said really stuck in my head and help me remember that he said you think relating is the icing on the cake. It's the cake, and you know it's it's the cake, not just on the stage the cake in life, the matter. What trying to get accomplished. If you can't do it through relating it's going to be a lot harder and a lot slower to might not happen at all yeah and feel like it's even more challenging now, because there are so many things that allow us to just be in our own worlds: our own heads isolate from other people that it feels like it's. You really do have to make a concert: effort to go out and connect and talk to people and care about what they have to say and not and not just go, I'm the about myself while they're moving their mouth. While thinking about my cell phone

and well done because I mean I know that that call of the electronic thing. You know you leave it up to here. Doing now. You just know it's in there he's got all this stuff in it and you can't help putting it up to your face. Are you technology guy? Do you like it or do you put up with it? No nerdy? I actually. I did commercials for Atari a long time ago, soon, pretty much right after mash was over. Still like thirty five years ago, oh my god and I was fascinate with the low. There was little machines that my I have a watch that has more computing power now than those machine yeah yeah, but you could you could put Graham, so I learned a little bit of the language computing language called basic basic programming and hike. I program the Atari to simulate a psychiatric section,

when it said it would say. Yes tell me about yourself, and you start typing: it would pick up certain words I'll. Tell me more about your job. You know you did this, your mother. That sounds interesting. Tell me more. That's really like there's a form of psycho. We were they just until you need yeah, they just bounce back, one more. You want for fifty dollars, eight hundred and eighty dollars. So just the time you get really involved and you really hooked in this. The situation in this process, the machine. Say I'm sorry, your always. So it was a real simulation just that little bit just to screw with something like I'm really interested in computers and how they worked, and I I've got had fun taking them apart and put it back together and ah

So I started my friends were, it is, is up on that is. I was with that. They were more interested, so I would fix my friends, computers and I had a. I would then send them an email from your friends at celebrity tech support. And my slogan was led by lit nobody touch your stuff.

I can't dad yeah. If I could bring it enough other celebrities, we could have a real big business. All you would need yeah, just a small, celebrity tech team. It was just like all the people that, if you could just take like the people who were doing match game in the late 70s like Richard Dawson's, going to come, fix your phone and an LP summers is going to fix your cable, but you gotta find ones you can actually do it yeah! That's the other thing. I would destroy the machines. You know they worked after I gave them advice. I mean, I think, one of the most incredible things to me about mash, as in as a concept is that it very rare that someone can take. You know one of the great movies of all time translated into a television show, and then the show has a complete wild, successful life and voice of its own. So what

you talk a little in the book about how well the cast we all would hang out together and we knew we weren't isolated. We were very much of you Know- was very much a community, but when that show was developing how? How did that happen? I mean what was the red sauce was a just a lock, or will they really did pull together some brilliant people and just mean the cast, because the case was wonderful, with Larry Gelbart wrote the first four years almost entirely few others. Others also wrote during that time. Okay, I think some of maybe she has something interesting to say why you bigger, I know I should've, let her come in and sit down. Tell us about your day would have to go with the flow who's. The biggest asshole you've ever cleaned getting dirt on people were talking about Larry, Gelbart and mash, and developing this the

sure the show was an extraordinarily good director gene Reynolds and he was a wonderful producer and we had something that other shows didn't. Have we weren't just copying a movie? We were trying to portray the lives of people who really lived, even though we were working in many different styles or wasn't realistic. Who is comedic? It was farcical, sometimes we dramatic, but we were trying to use the experiences of people who really lives through those horrible times the korean war. In that that gave me the I think it gave it a flavor that people recognize was not totally frivolous and trivial. Right I mean we wanted to be entertaining and when I think we were.

We also honored the fact that people had suffered and we're driven a little crazy by the experience. Well yeah and I mean there's so much more wonderful gallows, humor in the show, and you really get the sense that you know the comedy is a defense mechanism and it's coping mechanism- and you know I mean these people these people are, you know there they're joking around, while there they have soldiers body which, by the way, I'm sorry to say that I hear all surgeons do, that they do you don't want to believe when they're putting the thing on your face that that the surgeon is going to be doing the Henny Youngman any minute as long as ever they put everything back where it's supposed to go. I'm totally fine with that, not just everything where it goes but towels in the clips, and they all think that they put everything you get your money's worth, but I mean even even

of overcoming that the sensitive, a sensitive topic you know it's sensitive to to the story of soldiers at war with comedy and yet. You know you're able to do it in a way that was so meaningful. I think one of the things that we all agreed on because I want I didn't want to have a lot of people- know the story that I didn't to do the show and listen until we all agreed that you didn't want to do a show that ignored the war right, that it wasn't just hijinks at the front. Cuz most are shows up and I think all army shows up until that time were farcical situations where nobody was in danger of anything except a dressing down from the sergeant.

Put in our show, people were coming in shot at and sometimes they died, and that had been done before we mixed the hard truth of the danger of war, with people's natural reaction to that. So I that gave us something that that we wouldn't have had otherwise. But what what was nice was that we all went into it wanting to do The only people that didn't want to do it was the network who said, don't look in the pilot. They said you can't show any blood. Stay out of the operating room, great, you know there engines in a war yeah. So in fact, the first time somebody died, the guy who is head of programming. What is this? A situation? Tragedy? Okay,

that's pretty good! He wasn't writing for the show, but you know You also have society evolving. You know like the Vietnam WAR is essentially a televised war people that people are become a some to seeing the horrors of it and it really was kind of the zeitgeist of the time. I think thing people were ready. I mean anytime before that, all the Those were chipper and now everything works out in the end, and you know it's like a break from real life, but the. These between Machin of the Norman Lear shows. I mean you, you really see people are ready to start talking about real situations, yeah, and I think Mary Tyler Moore, helped to. Because there you had comedy that was based on character, and situations that warned mechanical, but that derived from real kind of recognizable human behavior and that helped us a lot because we still,

red riders coming in from the outside, who we're coming in with kind of standard situations that you had seen before. And it took us awhile to to people play what we were trying to you. Do you feel like you did anything that you wanted to do in that show, or did you think we tried to do this we never were able to, or do you feel, like you told all the stories? No, I think I was worried toward the toward the beach before we ended that we were running out of steam, because we had done so much that we wanted to do yeah. I don't think there was anything then we will, which was four years ago. We talked a lot about improvising this conversation and

for years I'd wanted a stamper vice, I thought would be fun to improvise a whole show wow and it turns out that Larry, Gelbart and Gene Reynolds actually did decide. I think independent of my urging they they came up with the idea of having um Cleide Roberts, who is reporter. I think he had actually reported on the korean war. Have him come in as always doing a documentary, an interview, Louis and Half of what we said during the interviews had been figured out. I'd been improvised by us into tape recorders the week before, and then Larry would take that in massage and punch it up a little bit. But then part of the interview would be on the spot. Questions that we didn't know were coming, and that was spot improv and some of that is kind of wonderful to see be

need to see, because I can see all these actors who, by this you are so in tune with their characters. Did you don't see them thinking? What should I say in answer to this question? The character just speaks the character is in them and comes out with the response, and it's it's emotional and it's it's funny, but it's coming out of a place. That's way back in the unconscious, and it's it's it feels genuine. Did you directed the last episode, yes, which I still I'm. I knew a lot of people had watched it, but it is the it's like the most watched thing in the history of television. Only hundred and twenty five million people, or so I don't think anybody really knows the feud figures very yeah, but we we got reports that people were filling town. Holes

in one one set? There might have been a hundred people watching over fifty people living rooms had family. It wasn't the usual thing of when I sounds like I'm trying to make it worse than it was better than it was it was what it was. We were about. Half the country was watching and that's and that's an amazing thing, so the I'm sure you've talked it's a lot. So I apologize, but the decision to not do the laugh track in the last episode was it just to kind of on the journey of the show and so say like this is this is: this is. This is really funny. I didn't remember that it didn't have a laugh track. Is that true? I don't think it did. If I re probably right, I don't think I think it was a big story that I'm like it's not going to be 'cause. He the other reason why seem to remember that it didn't because it's Hawkeye gets really fucked up

last episode and then there's the you know the chicken in the kidney may be in there, and so I, I honestly, don't think I I don't think there was a laugh track, the entire that entire left. It would probably so many moments that would have run counter to a left trying we we didn't have it. I don't remember the decision. I guess the decision was made early on a gene. Reynolds got CBS, agree that there wouldn't be a laugh track when we were in surgery, hello. He said of the surgeries to important here. You know doing jokes and surgery right, but that's him somehow we convince them that the surgery was, I guess, to see in the van to put a laugh track in, but anyway, we're is that, where is the audience supposed to be hiding during this scene to the under the cuts away in the right it it? It was the old fashioned idea that the then would know was a comedy if they didn't hear people laughing.

They go oh yeah right, buddy, oh wow, but they can, on our show, they kept a laugh track solo that people would say to me it's great that you have a show with no laugh track b. I think they were laughing at the same time. Oh they weren't hearing it they would. They didn't hear it yeah, that's great and it didn't overpower the sound of the show. Do you think about what happened to Hawkeye like? Could you think he ever got? never, ok, after the war did he was. Did you just go home completely twisted well completely twisted so based on that, I never think about that. I think about what That's when we're doing it, and then I really don't. I don't think too much about the past. That was it that it just ended where it ended. Um when

you did you take a break after the show for awhile, or did you want to immediately jump to the theater or right after that? I was writing a movie called Sweet Liberty and. I was having a little trouble concentrating because, even though I had been instrumental in the shows ending, I got a little depressed. They didn't. It was like stepping off of the train, speeding by a thousand miles an hour suddenly. It wasn't doing three jobs at once, going in every day and learning all the pages and finding the way to do it and that they all do just just a different light, So once the you know what I want

It cleans out the three yes, Sir WC fields said I want my. After that. I want my lemonade and then one day he was so drunk when they they put they put actual lemonade in stead of vodka, and he said somebody has put lemonade in my limit air, the only cold corona cure. So what the hell are we talking about it? Well, we were saying that you were depressed a little bit when the show ended because of the momentum. You know it's like engine

in the middle of the show it feels like. Oh, this is going to go on forever and then all the sudden, it's just old, yet stopped, and it doesn't matter if you're, the one who helps stop it. An I tell that to friends who are suddenly retiring or or who voice. Sometimes they get fired, you know, or they say no, I'm going to stop now and I'm going to enjoy life, and I say, may not be what you think away find something else to do. That also represents a passion and let that carry you and it and it's not a good idea to stop dead and then try to look for a passion. I think it's a better idea to have one standing by a passion in the wings yeah. Well, I think that's a title for a book passion in the wings. The next book got to you got to the next book, passion in the wings, ready by celebrity tech Little nobody touch paid for by a grant from the Celebrity Tech Institute. I mean, if we're doing, play

Let's plug my ipod care. You said you told me when I came in that you're going to be doing a podcast in July. You're starting the functions is starting July and I'm in between now and then I'll be interviewing a whole bunch of really fun people tomorrow, I'm going talk with Sarah Silverman Mona, serious radio, I'm so happy to be talking to had really admire and the and the the each of these conversations is a lot. Like what you and I have been doing to their, which is very much like the book which about relating and communicating in every aspect of life. You know boss, trying to get an employee motivated or an employee trying to get a bus to pay attention. Makarets things like that or doctors talking, the patients or patients talking to docked he's been trying to get them to really pay attention to them? It there isn't anything. I think there isn't anything we do that doesn't require more clarity and more vividness

in the way we communicate with each other so that we have something happening between us yeah so that it lands on on us and we we have an exchange, that's meaningful, but. Part of the problem, I think sometimes, is that people you know I think people just take for when did they go? We all sp, the same language. We pull from the same vocabulary book and then you really is. No. Everyone speaks a slight Proprietary language of their own and that's where you are trying to connect with people or disconnected from people if you're because someone might be saying something and they'll say it more emphatic Lee and you still might have. No, even though they're saying words that you understand yeah early, yes and it means something different to them, that it does to you very often, people will talk in code. They don't want to hurt your feelings and you'll say something completely opposite from what they really mean, but they think they're hinting at you. What the real thing is,

in which horrible about that is you, when you verdict smell a rat and you think waiting, but this isn't as rosy as there's making it sound. They have a problem here. Then you start guessing what the problem is and you think the worst and instead of two people being on the same side of an issue and working it out together, it's getting more and more defensive and offensive and there's a tug of war when there could they could be pulling in the same direction. You well I'm trying to say absolutely somebody doesn't isn't frank enough with you and then yeah, and then you, you have the live in your head? That's course based on your own insecurities or whatever your own baggage, and then you build this. Full story about why something happened and why someone said something you know they were just they just tried to me over it and they were talking about. I wasn't:

Everything any of that. I would write seven. A weird day, I don't have nothing to do with you at all yeah little things can grow into really big things and some is there a big things that can be tunneled through and you can meet each other in the middle somewhere? and understand one another's point of view well enough to give a little yeah. What was your jerk He like with scientific American. By the time you came out of it after doing frontiers for eleven years I mean, did you feel will infinitely more enlightened, or did you feel like oh wow, turns out. I know I feel, like I know less than I knew before I started this process will is very much like. Would you would you ended with I? It wasn't such wasn't that I knew less. It was. What I really knew now was that I do no anywhere near what I had thought I know would I had thought I know is that

I realized how important it was to say I've heard from scientists that instead of here's the way, it is right because I don't know how it is and to some extent they don't know fully the way it is either they know what they know so far and that's the lessons I think we have to learn about science and that I I always hope scientists will help us glom onto is that when they tell us something that they've newly discovered not telling us something, that's going to be true for all time in all respects, right, you're, going to learn more tomorrow next year, or one hundred awesome now and they're going to see it in a different way. It's just in

same way that Einstein figured out what he did about gravity, which is remarkable and overturned what everybody had thought about gravity, but Newton. Had a version of gravity that still works. We should get to the moon with Newton, but we have GPS with Einstein right because we used the calculations that he came up. Based on his understanding gravity, which is so different from newtons but they're, just too it's a different frame of reference to different aspect, it's a different way of conceive, and it doesn't mean that Einstein May Newton wrong it just he sure it in a different way. I think I think I'm saying this quickly, so I'm very happy to be contradicted by somebody who knows better, but that's that's what I get from talking to scientists about.

It's frustrating for them, two for people to say when you told me coffee was bad for me last year now you're telling me it might be good for me all right up your mind, yeah yeah! It's that dick. They keep learn, New things about it, and it doesn't mean what they told you before is wrong h, it's that in a different way of looking at it, it could be beneficial yeah. What do you think is the most important, or what do you with the most excited about scientifically? We think it's like the the most x an important scientific discovery, idea thing that you've encountered. One of the most certain things to me personally is that there's all these little tiny animals in our bodies that there are more cells, more microbes cells and our bodies. Then there are human cells

now that's kinda, weird? Isn't it yeah we're walking factories or walking castles of little guys who have their own interests and they they are adapted to different parts of our bodies? This I find fascinating. I've read that the microbes in the palm of my hand or more like the microbes. In the palm of your hand, then they are like the microbes on my elbow. Oh wow. Is that interest that, if that's fantastic, they're they're up acclimated to certain parts of the body on the back and this help. I just I do want to say, though, to the microbes in the palm of my hand, sorry for all the masturbating adapted to that.

Give them a hand are very similar to the microphone in this chapter by whoever stuff millions other than alive dead. Damn it you're right, I'm doing food, I must have boom, but then it's like going to the factory. In fact they subscribe to a magazine for you. I will but I mean I do, but I like the idea that you know as much as we I think we are so special and humans were so special and we're so involved that maybe we're just complicated vehicles. For these. My robes and that's Richard, do what I loved about Richard Dawkins, who came up with the word, by the way yeah yeah uses, meme is in a medically yeah his book. The selfish gene made popular the idea, which I don't think was his his invention, but he made it popular and made it really clear

dad we're here, because jeans wanna live forever. If genes could, want anything on right answer, but more flies them, but there there is there. An engine for survival is so powerful that that switch that we help them live call our genes help them. They are procreating. The jeans go on and on and I just took the Eo Wilson a few months ago said he proved with several mathematicians that that's not true, so there there is an example of it's a wonderful example of getting two of. Interesting view of nature. And then somebody else is, I don't think so. Now I'm not yeah, and then swedish A I see what you mean, I agree, or you die with your.

Is bread, saying I'm right, I'm right! Well, how do you even know? What's true anymore? I mean you: can you can really sort create almost any reality of information that you want, whether or not you know people are gonna source everything they read on the internet? Well, that that's a real question. I I think you you have to decide to what it to what extent you can check up on things and to what extent you have confidence in the reputations of the people, you're listening to right and the people who might be reporting it right but I find I have to go to some trouble. Sometimes the read between the lines or check up on the story with some other writer and see if I'm getting the real story about something happening, and it's not just in science. It's in everything. There's no

Eglin scientific American this month about how false stories or false news, travels faster and sticks better than the truth. Jesus. I don't I I didn't read it to fully so I don't know why. Why that's true, but it seems to be a thing make up the reason yeah when I, when I it'll get to be the reason that'll that'll actually get to be the reason. Well, it's the you. The there was that that can Shooter simulation that you know started. Writing all those science articles just jargon. I know I mean it's so easy to again most people. You can rely on the fact that most people will not, but the most people may not get it, especially if it's jargon and they think well. This must mean something right but in the book I wrote about this computer program that can generate cyantific appearing articles.

That have been submitted to journals and were printed in the journals, professional journals who wtge editors said well. This looks like it much You really don't understand some of these words, but they must know what they're talking about are some some construction like? That then enable them to print these things that we're just not since they were deliberate nonsense to see how far they could go of faking their way through that's whore, because it basically means you know. If some of the most ocular institutions can be fooled. I don't know how popular that all okay, all right did they were professional, but I don't know if they were the leading ones. Okay, gotcha. However, I think it's a great service, because it give a warning call to everybody to really do the homework and make sure that you're getting the straight stuff yeah.

I mean it's in a way. It's almost like hacking, where it's like. I we have your process. That means there's a security flaw. You should probably fix that yeah, which is why I guess the we're congratulating Russian for hacking us because they they really taught us a great thanks for the lesson. So much was there anyone think about being you is that there's so many the book we go. I was interested in the scientist, so I just call them up and then they came out. If he's not fun, it's great, so you could jump. I mention that you met Richard Feynman and you knew all the you know. I wish I had you that you never did. I I read about him for the first time after he was dead or no you know he was still alive, but I had no reason to call him. I mean I if I read something by somebody that I was re really really interesting- and I have a very close friend now who I didn't until I read an article by him

till I read an article by him in scientific American and I called him up and he did was very generous. I visited him at MIT and we had a great time talking about his work. Then we went down to the cafeteria. And while we were having lunch, a student came over and he was trend. You know, and I'm I'm used to people being disoriented little when they see somebody who's to them famous and he came over to the table and he said Are you Steve stroke at you didn't even know or care who I was. There was great. That's a nice though yeah I got a nice that someone recognized a scientist or an actor. It's it's so you know we. No, no. We don't always realize that certain People are celebrities to other people who we wouldn't think of his celebrity absolutely, and but we all.

I have somebody who would make us stutter when we meet them yeah well and you know we're in an era I mean it sounds like you've been a you. Or proto nerd. You are nerd before it was a popular thing to be, but Now we're in an age where we're you know the Neil Degrasse Tyson Bill, Nye era, where scientists are actually like a little scientists are very famous, and you know engineers are people create technology, so it is. It is a golden era for nerds. I think it's and it's a good time. I hope so and I hope they get better and better at communicating with us in ways that are flavorful to us, so we can really climb onto and enjoy it's it's it's so beautiful the work they do, whether it's, whether it's astronomy or biology, or even technology in engineering. It's really interesting to see how these problems are solved. I mean we all are solving problems all day long and some

we entertain ourselves. Just picking up a chinese puzzle or pseudo should do close it. Okay, Delco thing my wife to should all go day and night, the she's so good at it. The number puzzle here, but We love solving puzzles and to see how other people solve some of the greatest puzzles in the universe is very entertaining have you been to MIT's puzzle, I never heard what is its exact. What you're talking about, but it's a game that is, it works. It works by. The team who won the previous year constructs a puzzle, good idea, and there are a bunch of teams that compete and so the year that I went down at a table or do you run around in this? It's not like a scavenger hunt, but there is a lot of running around in the sense that so

the year I saw it, the previous year's winners came out. They designed the puzzle and a sketch like some sort of a presentation and from that all the teams got like they had to figure out what all clues were and they had to solve. Like a is of metal puzzles in each. Each line of metal puzzles had revealed the clue that solved a bigger metal. Well, I mean it's the most insane thing I've ever seen and they do it in a weekend, so it just you know that showed me if you aim enough nerds at something like you could solve a lot of stuff. You know and it feeds this love of solving puzzles. I think I'm sure they still do it, and I think I think you'd get a kick out of it. If you have a chance like it to be a little beyond me, but you maybe that I wrote a play about Einstein and I the research it came across this interesting homie thing.

He said said my wife and I don't do puzzles or play games at home because we spend our whole day solving puzzles so they just stare at each other and puzzle of gravity yeah those puzzles, I'm not going to play slides and ladders or kid and ladders shoots and ladders if you're, british, but the through kind of all of it. I think the through line of the improvisation, the through line of the cation and and and science communication, and particularly seems to be. You know. You say the word empathy Empath, the company is a through line of the book. It really has been something. That's become very important. In my life, sorry amp apathy has become a paw.

In my life- and I see that to a great extent, one of the th trajectories I've been on is to try to understand it and be able to practice it to use it. I wasn't tremendous Lee Empathic when I was a kid or a young man. I probably had some capacity for, but I was really interested in myself yeah and he up and say the wrong thing if you know think and think about what the other person is getting her they're hearing it. So I can remember a lot of times. I can win said things I said three thousand and forty years ago, there were thirty or forty years ago. It's fine if they did that yes and their dad a little bit worried about you while you're still a lot. So you were right, but you know whether the just sort of being

I actually just saw story. I don't know if you saw this, but did they just determine that empathy The percentage of empathy might be genetic that there might be that it might be a little bit nature and not just nurture. I haven't heard that, but I wouldn't be surprised. I would imagine that we all come in with uh some capacity for it, but it can be taught some people think it can't be taught that you stuck with what you come in with uh other people think that you don't come in with any and you must be taught you overthrew early nurturing You know just like the other other things that you possess, some of which are chicken summer developed it

seems to me it's always a combination of the tools that the old argument of nature nurture is, I think, that's a fold false of die economy. Oh yeah, you think it's most case from what I hear from scientist. We've talked to a few see I don't I don't. I really do. I hope I haven't sounded like I think I know no trying to figure it out. No, not at all. Was there a particular moment in the show where you thought haha I'm going to in yes, this scientist and then you drop a fact and they go that's not true at all. He will. The awful thing was. I would do that in the very beginning and they were too embarrassed with the cameras, going to say: that's not true at all. Ok- and I see this terrible anguish on their face. 'cause they don't hurt my feelings and they know that I'm driving them into a corner that they can't get out of. I tell

about this, you know a thing about your work. Is that and- and that would be true at all and if that's the point when I stopped reading their articles and and their journals their or their studies before I went into interviews, and I would go in just with general knowledge and have them tell me what they did and then try to understand. Instead of thinking, I could understand it and it. Means. Why would I understand it in advance? I'm not an expert in that field. I have to start out innocent of any thought of having knowledge and as ignorant as I actually am, it's good to be ignored if you're curious. Oh that's great! That's great! I mean you because you know being on. The most popular television show in the history of television and being super famous at a time where you know it's thing different in the world media now on entertainment, but at that time and still be

able to come out of that and go there are bigger things than I there's. You know science and the universe, and then I mean that's not common. You know like that's, not common. For someone to come off of it showing go, I'm going to go explore science. There are bigger things than just me. Well, you have to realize, am monumentally humble he well I you know it is. I followed my nose and I was lucky enough to be able to afford to do that. Most people have their nose in the grindstone and they can't afford to take it out. So I am I am. We started talking about, look extremely lucky and I know it but you, but how long married now, sixty one years yesterday day before we got congratulations what's the date today is the 16th. Yesterday, with sixty one years, the ides of happy anniversary. I wrote a little poem about the Ides of March. Today we were married, you did he remember it, no

I remember but I remember a limerick. I wrote had nothing to do with getting married drop it in. We were driving through England and the game was every time we passed through a town. We have to come with a limerick about the name of that town, oh my god, so we drove through, settle as she, ptle, grounded shuttle, and I made this up a beard Bing Lady from shuttle took mid morning pee in her kettle at two hundred and forty five, her husband made tea and said darling. You've tested my met, who doesn't love a good bridge, hp drinking limerick. That is epic. What is the key to a sixty one year

Obviously I would imagine that, as that also kept you tethered as well to not go crazy is to have a solid relationship, but what's the the is it empathy or I don't think anybody knows what it is, but Arlene my wife says the secret: of a long marriage? Is a short memory with the hell with her, you know she'll. Never remember you said it is totally fine. It's right! Yeah, thank God, yeah! Well, the book is phenomenal called if I understood you what I have this look on my face, and uh. I really recommend that people not only just read it but maybe get the audio book two. Because it's so it's so nice really nice so great to hear you to hear you read it you and the and, and then I'm going to plug my

self again. You may not even leave descent plug it, but I'm hoping that the the nature of the book will be what infuses the podcast, which is going to be cold, clear, clear and vivid that that that what do you got out of listening to the book is what I hope the podcast will deliver talking to interesting people who are facing real problems in communication and relating, and we can learn how to do that here comes the guide. If we need to get together, we need to do it more than we ever have that anytime, I can remember I mean it's not just everybody complains that Congress can't talk to one another. They can't get things done, you have to be careful when you go to dinner with a friend now not to say the wrong thing sure, depending which side of political line you're on oh yeah, it's not there's! No, I mean

we're in an era now, where, if you don't a hundred, and agree with someone that seems to give people the green light to just make them their enemy. I was like. Well, that's not going to solve anything. You have to compromise and talk and come together and most people are not evil they just have there. Whatever their interests are, and so how Do you get around that? Do you think? How can you lower people's defenses and even if you're, on the complete opposite side still be able to have a po? like discourse. Well, in all the ways that we tried to teach scientist to communicate and doctors to communicate and people in business which essentially is taking in the other person, accepting that accepting the idea that what they have to say could possibly change you for the better. It's a crazy idea,

I should I see you and I just met. Why should I think anything you have to say to Maine can make me better specially. If I hear you say something that I deeply disagree with. Well, how else am I going to learn if I don't learn from you? I gotta learn from somebody. If I learning from people who say the same thing I say I'm never going to get to someplace new. I have to hear dissent. I have to hear crazy. Eyed is maybe something new will come up. That's valuable to both of us if it gets to be a two way street will both benefit yeah, but I think people get so scared about their own no, I can't I don't want can't, learn anything new or I can't violate this bubble that I've built around myself and yeah. Well that I I felt that too. I know what that's like: it's scary, it's like,

that woman who didn't want to improvise and she was going to fake a heart attack right, it's scary, to let go that's why it's really valuable to practice, giving up, control and trusting the other person. It's so valuable. You feel free by you. You don't have to be right all the time I I can tell you, I feel that maybe this is not true for everybody, but I feel so good. I have flooded with a little shot of dopamine when I, honestly say to somebody I don't know the answer to that and that's an interesting tonight. I have no idea when I was a young man. I'd make up an answer. I'd come up with something that sounded

reasonable and I'd say it as though it were true Becaus. It felt good to have the answer to a tough question. Now it feels so much better to admit I don't have the answer. I don't have to be in control. I don't have to tell people what to do. I can let people come up with their own ideas and respond. It's it feels good, but it's like exercise feels good after you're done, with it yeah, of course, yeah, but they actually can feel good while you're doing it adapt adjust revise yes by the way. I don't know why it shows those three words. I chose them in a couple of minutes Skyland, and they only gave you a few words, so you literally gave them a few words yeah, but they turned out to be pretty good words. At least I work by them,

just for people at home who are listening. That say: hey you know this idea, even if I'm not going to go into comedy or going improvising or be an actor, but just as a way to get some more so tools. Is there like a quick game game that you can throw out that people could employ and in their own lives it's pretty simple. I like talk about it in the book. What I do would I practice a lot is when I'm talking to somebody I catch myself, sometimes one thousand and fifteen minutes into a conversation. I we wouldn't be. If I turned away from the person, they wouldn't be able to tell you what color their eyes are or which shape their noses, how their hair is fixed. It's amazing how, if you just look away from somebody per second instead of seeing their face and your imagination, you see a blur where the faces, so I practice. Really taking in the face and

figuring it out, almost as if I were going to draw it or something I can't draw. But if I was going to commit the elements of the face to paper. I would look at a while, I'm talking. Sometimes it distracts me from what I'm saying, but I'm told until the person I'm taking them in and it it Lee into a little more connection, honey. I think Alan This staring at me right, he's giving me that look, don't worry just taking you in practicing empathy. Well, that's gay very well, but ultimately I guess what that does. Is it gets you out of your own head. It get you to pay attention to other people and it gets you to listen and I think that's our big challenges, not just hearing people that would become better listener did funny thing that we've found out in these workshops is the person.

Is trying to communicate. Something has to be a better listener than the person listening. Oh wow 'cause, if you're not aware of what the other person is going through in effect, listening to them with your eyes and your ears, then you are never going to make sure that they're getting it you just going to hope they get it yeah. Well, you said something that I mean. I'm not you know I'm a comedian, but I'm not an actor, but you said something that if I we're going to be an actor was one of the most succinct brill things about acting that I've ever heard. Maybe you can apply this in real life, but you said you have to find your performance, the other person, the other person's eyes. And the other person's eyes yeah! That's right! That's an incredible! I didn't make that up. I'm sure that other actors have said this that take credit, for it was going to check yeah tend to book, let them

yeah, exactly yeah yeah they're dead come on fuck them to do. But that's true. You know if you figure out a performance and do it every night, regardless of what's happening in the other actors face. It it's not going to look to the audience like two people in real, a real to entanglement is going to look like you're reciting lines. They have memorized and if both people respond to each other like a leaf in the wind and change. Second, by second.

Millisecond by millisecond, then you're going to see something that happens between the lines that convinces you that there really connected that there really engaged in this tug of war that there going going through on stage and it's easier to do on stage that it isn't film, because infill You shoot a close up of you, then you shoot a close up of me and they don't necessarily throw the ball back and forth right. 'cause, you're, close up could be from take two in mind could be from take twelve right, but I still think it's a good thing too. Practice in real life is finding your. You know if, when you're talking to someone, if you're really trying to find your store, together in their eyes, then maybe Even just that adjustment will create it

the allow you to connect with people more get you out of your own head. I mean that's a very simple thing to do next thing: most people just don't think about it, yeah many things we think we are looking and seeing the other person Ann. I had this amazing moment one day when I realized I was looking at the purse, but it wasn't seeing them, I wasn't. I wasn't aware of important features in their face so I must not have been seeing them yeah. Do you think two, you sort. Talk about this a little bit. There's a section on dark empathy yeah, but is too much empathy. Impossible. In other words, if you, if every person you encountered, you were a pathetic with you know, could you

simple that, first of all, it's an incredible amount of energy. Would you be able to process that much or you know like? When? Does it not become helpful? This is a problem that many doctors have where if they reached the point where they're very empathic, with their patients unless they develop the ability to withdraw a little bit. They can get swamped by the emotion and and it it can lead to burnout they have to get in, but they have to get out right right, right, right. The dark empathy that I try to talk about, is when you use empathy, because I, but the I think, is just a tool, it doesn't make you a good person right. If you want to be a good person, empathy can kick you over, you're into that action of good behavior. You can con people too. You can kind people with empathy

the salesman do it all the time used car salesman, herb, probably very empathic, and when you take your family out in this car you're going to feel like a million bucks. You know I just have say just because people couldn't see it. Your face changed when you wanted to use car sales on mode and I wanted to buy car was like it was this really like it even at because you were very pleasant face, but it was even more like how the the let the smile lines and that it was so now I'm like. Oh my God, Lou it's true. You know you were a pretty mpc some people, one pharmaceutical company trained its salesman to use empathy to convince doctors to buy the pills whether or not it was good patients, they had studies that showed it was bad for the page. Great, oh well, you know hey pharmaceutical industry and they paid a huge fine for that. Well, that's good, but I

I'm really it's really an honor to chat with you. I mean I mean. I knew something things about you but listening to the book just opened up these other amazing worlds to me about how passion it you are about science and and connection and communication and eve you know even to hear at eighty one eight thousand two hundred and eighty m eighty two, I think I made it to you- know I'm starting to cast now like it, the relentless pursuit of passion, and you know connecting Other people is has taken to some really fascinating places as we're wrapping this up with, or anything that you're most proud of from this. Very that's all I wanted to see if there was a blackout directory. In light of this blackout blackout, how you can do theme music, so yeah, that's perfect, yeah yeah, we'll just right there, but I really. I can't thank

thanks for having me in your head, oh great time, saying thank you and good luck with the podcast. Thank you fun to do, and you're really good at oh. Thank you. No give me tips. Uh! Do you have any tips you can give me I've been giving you tips for today well. What did you learn? What did you learn doing the podcast that I should made my time going through the learning process on you said out of the things at the beginning of your pod, at beginning of your book about how you found some a lot of times. People say: oh, do you prepare questions and you do and I go no, because if you in agenda you're not paying attention to the moment and then, if you now, everything then you're not really going to ask questions, and if you you you're, going to direct those questions, so I feel, like you, do everything that you know. I think what people don't understand about when they listen to an audio thing, is that when you're sitting at from someone you're taking in every bit of information,

so you're watching their body, language and you're, seeing when they, if they don't want to talk about something, are you seeing if they shift or they smile there happy? So sometimes people listen to go. He man I do this or why didn't you talk about, and it's like? Oh 'cause, I have information you don't have like. I can see this person, but honestly, I don't think there is thing I can tell you that you're not already doing just talk to people that interest you and that's it, your the vessel, your basically the transportation device for the audience. You know you you're there ride for being a fly on the wall and humanizing these people that they necessarily think of his human because they used to seeing them as in two dimensions. There's something very interesting. I I I ig value what you're saying and I'm a member of the keep in mind, and I I think, as you sound like You totally on the right track and it's born out in the way you do your show and roadshow,

wishing that sounds to me. The more I've done podcasts as the person being interviewed or interview other people. It reminds me of the old days in television, when you weren't on a big network, talk, show you on a local show where it didn't matter. If it wasn't stimulating every second, there was more creativity on the big shows. They'd come to your report before the surgery Johnny Carson's going to ask you this and you answer this yeah. Then it's a script. It's like a script. Where is here you have the freedom, partly because you can edit it and partly be cause. I think the this new expects of freewheeling conversation. It's not four minutes of Bing Bang boom right right well, the only other thing I would say, and it sounds like you already do this, but you know on the

and show you have science as the backbone. So you always know that that's kind of going to be your your track. I kind of like to just let where, wherever the person is at, I just start for If someone is very energetic when they come in and I just let them be energetic and I follow them and just going to keep the ball in the air that way and if they're, very mellow, I just I really just kind of let them emotionally directed until they're comfortable and then we kind of lifted up. So I guess you know dumb even telling you this 'cause. I feel like you already do this, but just just he opened to going wherever the other person seems like they. Want to go, and you know maybe it takes directions you never expected before? Maybe you end up talking about something completely nonsensical, but that I think, is kind of where the secret sauce of the podcast is your Discribing Imp

I guess that's true great yeah, so good to remember and so good to state an restate, so many different ways as many different ways as possible and I and I will keep that in mind boy. I I did it I I I I followed the stand up track, but there was a period of time where I took classes the grounding like twenty years ago and what I realized, I was not going to be a great I can riff but like in structured improv. The they end up jeans take over and I just start trying to control the scene. Makeup, jokes yeah, it actually yeah. I had a. I was in jokes, jokes of forbidden and impress yes. Yes, there was one teacher that if I may to do you, if anyone made a joke, joke stop it.

It really is. If people don't do you know, the regular audience doesn't understand that that improvising is not a series of jokes all right, classic improvising they were does entered their entertainments, like whose line is it anyway, where their job is to come up with a funny thing: yeah there's a games yet whether trip there they're supposed to be funny every fifteen seconds or less right. There is a is more fundamental kind of improvising that doesn't do that and you're. Also we just finding the story together. He yeah yeah, yeah and yeah, and that think of yes and is at work all the time where you're you, except with the other person, gives you and you say, and there's also this element in it too yeah at the the way I write about in the book is from the scientists who is an improviser, and he he did

yes and one guy says, We are in there in front of an audience there on the stage and one says: look at the lab water down there and the other. Says: that's not water, that's the stage! The scenes dead seems that he gets a laugh but he's killed. The entire thing a show closes people going. I can't pay the mortgage. Everyone does because he said No, the the the on the country or, if he says, yeah level, would that would let's dive into that water and let's follow that whale out there yeah he saw at the end is the whale, but the yes, he no matter how weird the the idea is, that you're presented with you, let it in and then you play with it. You add you don't say no, you don't say, but it's really it's a fundamental idea and I

see so many people in these workshops when they get the idea, it's a liberating, because you don't have to go into a fight. You don't have to say this will never do forget it not possible. You say yeah, that's a let's see and what, if we do it like this, what what? What if we add this to it and and and you find out that they're actually has been a country, but neither of you realize it until the end came in. Oh that's amazing. I mean it is just getting people to a space where they're, comfortable and open and not scared and offensive. Now this reminds we would an old word billion. One said it's easy to get on stage. You throw your head on and follow it on. The hard part is getting off. How do we get off? How do you ever? How do you not milk, it yeah? How do you, yeah. I think that's probably the perfect place to end

otherwise I'm just going to keep milk in this, and I would talk to you all day, but I guess I guess we will take. We'll. Take our vows right now, Alan Alden Ire Boeing, there's applause, the crowd, the crowd is: go only two people showed up to this performance, but they're dedicated fans. That's. One person making the noise for an entire audience, but he's very enthusiastic, and I just I wish you continued success and best of luck with everything. Thank you. You too there's a lot of fun. I appreciate it thanks so much and I'm going to go to end this with normal, we say enjoy. Your burrito is how we in the podcast can wait. Why the hell? Do you say that, because it means enjoy your present, it's all about living in the moment enjoy the burrito at home. But, but I I feel like I want to- I want to do a creepy thing and you: Do you have a line and crimes and misdemeanors that I still think about all the time where you say if it

means it's funny if it breaks it isn't funny, and I still think about that. Do you think that's true? Oh, I think it's very true. In fact, I think that that's starting I've seemed comedy that challenges that idea and I don't think it works. I accept it seems to work for younger people. There's a movie where I forget who did it. Where a guy's arm is shot off and he's bleeding from your end is supposed to be a funny moment yeah, I would say, having your arm ripped off his breaking, but within the context of the story it can be really funny yeah. I think you have to be willing to accept a certain point of blood. Well, some people over there was saying like oh comedy- is tragedy plus time you know, but I think comedy is tragedy. Plus distance and distance, and time is a measurement of distance. It reminds MEL, Brooks, I think, MEL said

when a man somebody full into a manhole. No, I sure manhole yeah, that's funny. That's comedy when you fall in that strategy, yeah pervades adapt adjusts to revise the end, but it's not over see. I told you at the vet. Beginning. If you listen to the intro that I was going to tag something on the end, and here it was so I was so kind of flus it actually in a positive way. When Alan asked for my advice on podcasting that I feel so, I had the perfect opportunity to then get reciprocal information. 'cause he's starting a podcast which I've been doing for many years and I am starting a science show which he has done. He had done for many years, so I just got caught up in my own head that what I should have said was hey now,

while we're on the topic. Could I get some advice. Words of wisdom for starting a science show, which is the awesome, show that were in pre production on right now, and so I beat myself about about it all the way home, which is something I do sometimes like Routier, Whiting. All you should have. It would have been amazing. How could you not ask this man what he thought about this thing you want to do so? Fortunately, we traded emails and this shadow, an email- and I say I feel totally stupid, but do you have any advice for me? I should have asked this before and I'm dumb for not do you have any advice for me with regards with regards to making the science show any nuggets. Are welcome and he wrote back Chris. I had a really great time. You for conversation. Listen you make it fun or come on. My advice is to do exactly what we talked about engage them in real conversations, be curious and don't

come in thinking. You know something and don't leave until you do and keep fishing for human personal stories and the one thing we didn't mention don't forget the mysterious beauty of nature. You will be great, so was completely beside self to get this incredibly sweet and complementary email with some very simple words of wisdom for the science podcast, which the science show, which I think are applicable to pretty much life everything in life. You can apply these words of wisdom, but I expressed so much gratitude and appreciation, not only for what I get to do and the things that I get to make. But the people that I get to encounter who have legit am in the end, these nine hundred and whatever forty seven pi cast and counting have helped me strive to be a better person, and I really thank them for that for letting sponge off their genius. So thanks so much and for real this time enjoy your burrito

id ten t scanning complete, enjoy your burrito