Philosophy vs. Improv

In this pitched, high-stakes battle, your hosts have it out about astrological biases, doing offensive accents, letting go of control in an improv scene, and group-based restrictions on who you feel you date. OK, actually, it’s not a battle, but an illustration of how the dynamics of changing one’s mind works: Despite what you might be reading or who might be lecturing at you or demonstrating something for you, you invariably have to do the work yourself. Does Jesus have time to appear on your toast? Are all TV characters robots in a shared robot universe? Are zodiac signs based on serial killer characteristics? How does Pluto FEEL about not being a planet any more? So many vital questions definitively addressed in one meditation together… You can choose to watch this on unedited video: Image note: we’re taking a break from AI art this week, as planets are a slam dunk for actual kid art, and this one is by Amulya Altagi, shortlisted in an actual painting competition.

St. Lawrence philosophy prof Jennifer L. Hansen, one of the most frequent guest on Mark’s podcasts and expert in feminist philosophy, here hits it off with our new host Mary. We act out vegan jerky time, snacktime at the all-girls clubhouse, and two gals getting pulled over by a cop. Does the “come debate me” style of philosophy include unnecessarily masculine tropes? How does this Charlie Kirk model relate to what Socrates was doing? What are alternative, fun ways to get students to talk in philosophy classes? The inspirational figure that Mary refers to is Viola Spolin. Sponsor: Visit squarespace.com/LINSENMAYER (code LINSENMAYER) for a free trial and 10% off your first website or domain. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get all the post-game chatter and an ad-free experience. You can choose to watch this unedited on YouTube (without the post-game): Image note: In asking MidJourney to draw me “crazy town,” its only way of interpreting that image was to give me variations where the buildings are of various bright colors. This option I thought was exceptional in that it seems like the town is being bombed, which seemed morbidly appropriate given current goings-on.

What is it worth raising an objection over, and how hard do you fight? We hear (and act out) Mary’s roommate-searching trauma, plus Mary for President, curiosity about bellicose Twitter, respect vs. reverence, rationality and religion, dealing with QAnon believers, family Thanksgiving, giving someone else a name, vegetarianism, and the angel of philosophy. Here’s that Steve Harvey show clip where Mary was on TV. Here’s that PEL episode on Richard Rorty on truth and religion that I mention. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get all the post-game chatter (though not on this particular episode) and an ad-free experience. Sponsor: Visit squarespace.com/LINSENMAYER (code LINSENMAYER) for a free trial and 10% off your first website or domain. You can choose to watch this unedited on video:

Jerome is an LA composer/director/screenwriter who is involved in a lot of musical improv, so Mary and Mark interview him about that and about the function of art, plus songs for pets, a support group for people who sing all the time, and more. Jerome sticks around for the post-game, which is normally restricted to supporters, but which you get to hear as a sample this time. We demonstrate why collaborative singing over the Internet does not work. How fast should one sing “Happy Birthday”? Listen to the dirge version of “12 Days of Xmas.” We talk about the relation between composition and improv. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get all the post-game chatter and an ad free experience. Sponsor: Visit squarespace.com/LINSENMAYER (code LINSENMAYER) for a free trial and 10% off your first website or domain. Image Note: Today’s MidJourney prompt was “an opera singer running very fast while singing, with a zigzagging cartoon dust trail behind to indicate speed, as drawn by a child in crayon.” As usual, the request to draw like a child was ignored, but at least we have some good crayon texture. You can choose to watch this on video:

Elijah is a philosophy prof (and PhD theologian) in Vancouver who was a die-hard, evangelical Christian but gradually became liberal and then atheist. In light of his latest book that collects all your favorite arguments for and against the existence of God, called UnBelieving God: A Skeptic’s Guide, Mark and Mary chat with him about his journey and about the degree to which we should care about others’ beliefs in this area so as to engage them in debate. In the course of this, as you’d expect, God makes a personal appearance (with Mary), and there’s an aborted sketch about a brainwashing service. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Sponsor: Visit squarespace.com/LINSENMAYER (code LINSENMAYER) for a free trial and 10% off your first website or domain. You can choose to watch this unedited on video: Image Note: Today’s MidJourney prompt was “god smiting a cowering, bearded philosopher, as drawn crudely in crayon by an 8-year-old.” For some reason all of the results showed only one figure, making God INTO the bearded philosopher, but I liked one of them, so here we are. I’m particularly intrigued by what the shapes on the edges of the drawing might be: is that a donkey’s nose on the left?

To kick off the Year of Our Lord 2026, Mark and Mary talk about memory: memory care for the elderly, the relation between things and memories, what professional activities are worth preserving (improv performances?), being the tchotchke, womb nostalgia, puppets and percussion, plus a visit from the future. You can choose to watch the main part of this discussion on unedited video. Sponsor: Visit squarespace.com/LINSENMAYER (code LINSENMAYER) for a free trial and 10% off your first website or domain. You can choose to watch this as unedited video: Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Image note: A lot of frustration with MidJourney today. I initially asked for “a rainstick and percussion triangle having a conversation on a shelf, as drawn in crayon by a child,” and this was one of the results. I reran it and asked for two variations, and it all just got worse. In all cases, MidJourney seemed unable to grasp what the musical instrument triangle looked like, even when I looked up its technical name (an idiophone) and tried that. It just produced geometric triangles: pyramids and cones. Per usual, the options all to various degrees had crayon-like texture but looked nothing like what a child would draw.

Rich runs the Dare to Fail improv school and is author of Improv Made Easier. He joins Mark and Mary to discuss contexts of failure, failing to meet your goals vs. “objective failure,” how to react in an improv scene to some topic that’s too offensive for you, graveyard humor vs. reverence. Featuring Steaks You Deserve, Robo-Carson, cancer torture, interactive cemetery, Sounds of Failure, and open-sourced MST3K. Did you know Mary talks to plants? “That was so nice, sweetie!” Sponsor: Visit squarespace.com/LINSENMAYER (code LINSENMAYER) for a free trial and 10% off your first website or domain. You can choose to watch this as unedited video: Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Image Note: I asked MidJourney for “An obviously robotic Johnny Carson with an ‘F’ tattooed on his forehead, as drawn by an 8-year-old in crayon.” I had to run it three times and finally got one that actually looked like Johnny Carson, had some obviously robotic features, and had a legible F. Per usual, this looks far beyond what a child could possibly draw, and I would say this is colored pens rather than crayon, but at least there’s some scribbling involved.

Philosopher/writer/critic/podcaster Lawrence Ware returns to the show to meet Mary and talk about how Mark is his own personal Leroy Jesus. We act out and/or discuss orphan greeting cards, face-to-face instruction vs. writing books, imaginary friends, laugh trumpets, black ice, and is aesthetic judgment (especially of yourself) a mistake? Sponsors: Get the holiday deal (up to 50% off!) at MasterClass.com/IMPROV. Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at rula.com/improv. Hear Lawrence on The Partially Examined Life talking about Jesus’ parables. You can choose to watch this on unedited video: Image note: Again using Midjourney AI, I attempted to have Lawrence dressed as Santa drawn by a child with crayon. None of the options looked particularly like Lawrence, so I uploaded his photo and asked again, but the results were even worse, so either I don’t know how to use the program to work on an uploaded photo or it is just janky. Note that I also ran one asking for “podcaster Mark Linsenmayer” dressed as Santa, and the results demonstrated conclusively that MidJourney is not going online and finding an actual photo of the person you specify. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Our post-game talking is free this time for anyone visiting our Patreon site.

Is argumentation essential to philosophy? Should you always be open to arguments challenging your beliefs? An actual argument would not be just two abstract positions being measured against each other, but two people with some stakes in the issue, and of course the most interesting philosophical issues have to do with how we live our lives, and so what could be more personal and potentially insulting than challenges to your life choices? We act out a few symbiotic scenarios and reflect back on our last couple of episodes interacting with people not named Mary or Mark. Plus animal facts, complaining to your significant other about exes, astrology prejudice, sexual harassment videos, and on-stage self-pleasure. Sponsor: Get the holiday deal (up to 50% off!) at MasterClass.com/IMPROV. You can choose to watch this on unedited video: Image note: MidJourney did OK showing a sucker fish on top of a frog, and it does look like a crayon drawing, but still fails to know how a six-year-old would actually draw. They added a new “figure out a style” system which I’m trying to use to train it how to draw like a six-year-old, but given that they just present a variety of styles to choose from and none of them are remotely close, this seems unpromising. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast!

Seth is an improviser and aspiring professional “muse,” which is a type of life coach that hangs out with you to see where you could be more in touch with your humanity so that you can then work out a coherent plan for your adult life. He discusses with Mary and Mark the conflict between authentic individual humans and a social structure filled with oppressive systems. Should we “deprogram” ourselves from our standardized upbringing? Is there actually an authentic core we would uncover if we do so, or just a void ready to be filled with the promises of self-help gurus? We act out the personality store, the physically safe space, vulnerability coaching, ankle removal consideration, and more. Image note: The (second try) MidJourney prompt this time was “various knick-knacks, crudely created as if by children.” When I initially tried for “various small tchotchkes drawn by a seven year old,” it just gave me, like a uniform series of rocks with drawings on them, or a large set of fridge magnets. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Sponsor: Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at rula.com/improv. You can choose to watch this on video:

Scott, until lately a philosophy professor at Oklahoma State University, joins Mark and Mary to tout his new book, Thinking Ethically: A Handbook for Making Moral Choices. The point is to provide some helpful tips in our age of non-communication for how we can explore and debate varying positions on hot button social issues. So how does debate role-playing jibe with improv comedy? Scott is also a “philosophical counselor,” so what’s that all about, and can we play with that? Should you discuss controversial ideas with people sitting next to you on an airplane? Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Sponsor: Get 15% off at MasterClass.com/IMPROV. You can choose to watch this unedited on YouTube: Image note: MidJourney does a less terrible job this time, in response to the prompt “A drawing by a six-year old of a debate club.” Seems like a bit too much detail for six, but at least it looks crayon-produced, and I can nearly guarantee that no actual six year old would choose this topic.

Mark and Mary are joined by improvisor/comedian/actress/filmmaker/host Vickie to talk about code switching and authenticity. Can you be authentic and still work a day job? Can Problem Solvers, Inc. solve the office restroom schedule? Are authentic hippies really beatniks? Also, displaying comic America on Korean talk shows, ethical pornography, commerce vs. art, granola in your hair, feet picks vs. feet pics, and more. Vickie sticks around for a bit of post-game (usually restricted to supporters but shared with you this time), where we talk about the improv lessons and techniques from the episode and refresh what the point of this podcast is. Image note: I’m continuing to experiment with MidJourney, which absolutely doesn’t know how to draw like a child draws. My query this time led off with: “I’m looking for another drawing that looks like it was created by a 5 year old. NOT a drawing FOR a 5 year old, but DRAWN BY a 5 year old,” and I see no evidence that this direction was followed. Otherwise, I just asked for some hippies, one of which looked more punk, one more beatnik, so you can decide for yourself which is which and whether MidJourney is sexist for not being able to perform such hybridization on its AI women. Oh, also, here it is animated; I find it fairly ghastly. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You can choose to watch this unedited on YouTube:

How does your body talk to you? Your favorite hosts-of-a-philosophy-and-improv-comedy show Mark Linsenmayer and Merry Mary Hynes re-connect after both being sick to get a bit Halloweeny so as to talk about various food-related monsters, experiencing art by disgraced creators, inner homunculi a la “Inside Out,” movie talk, Nietzsche’s nose fetish, and more. Sponsor: Get 15% off at MasterClass.com/IMPROV. Image Note: Once again MidJourney fails to imitate a child’s drawing style, instead giving us a pretty awful take on art made FOR children. My prompt was for a Vitruvian-man-looking body with various dialogue bubbles, such that the brain is saying “Relax,” the stomach is saying “Chocolate,” and the butt is saying “Toot.” I had to run the query multiple times, and this was the best it came up with. I do not know what “Toat” means or why the image has that title. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You can choose to watch this unedited on YouTube:

Mark’s Partially Examined Life co-host Seth joins us (i.e. Mark and Mary) to introduce Seth to improv and continue introducing philosophy to Mary. We discuss Seth’s attraction to depressing texts, act out couples’ therapy and monster beauty parlor, and open up a few philosophical cans of worms: Is truth relative? (Hint: no!) Does outer beauty reflect inner beauty? You can choose to watch this episode unedited on YouTube: My image for the last episode was created with Claude AI, which informed me that it is not actually an image generator, so I have taken the plunge and have gotten a MidJourney subscription. This image of some couples’ therapy by a pit was supposed to be “as if drawn by a 4-year-old,” but I think achieving the desired level of shoddiness may be an ongoing struggle with this tool. Why are there people in the pit? I don’t know; I didn’t ask for that. Why is the therapist apparently a child? No clue. MidJourney generates several options based on any given query, and I picked this one, but they all featured people in the pit, and many of them looked much less child-drawn, so this is what you get today.

It is a new era, a new dawn, a new beginning, with a new font of improv wisdom in the form of Merry Mary Hynes, whom you’ve met, and in turn a fresh challenge for Mark to engage in philosophy tutoring with a brilliant but free-from-academic-philosophy-training partner. Sponsor: Get 15% off at MasterClass.com/IMPROV. We start off with some improv to explore the idea of being a co-host, then Mark attempts to relate a bit of Luce Irigaray (hear the full Partially Examined Life episode on her) and briefly attempts to argue that all our concern with representation (seeing YOURSELF on screen or whatnot) is dwarfed by the existential gulf between individuals. Mary discusses her non-binary identification through the medium of Doctor Who. All this prompts another scene with us doing weird accents at the Feminist Café, Mark relating the history of his vocal training (including a brief clip of the actual recording of voice lessons from 1990), a scene about an aging child pop star, and discussion of how an audience relates to changes in what a performer does over time (like, say, when a podcast you like gets a new co-host…). Finally, what is philosophy, and have you been doing it already in some form throughout your life, even if you never took a class with that name? The image used here reflects the new era. Instead of shamelessly stealing child’s drawings off the Internet, in Season Five here, I am getting up with the times and instead telling AI to create graphics in the style of children’s drawings and watching it fail miserably. In this case, the result looks like a beginner user of Corel Draw instead of a child using crayons, but this is what Claude AI delivered, and you can be sure that I am not putting child artists out of work by creating it this way. I ask you to contemplate the hair styles here, from the lefty’s jaunty beret-style hair to the righty’s yellow clam-shell style hat a la Dumb Donald from Fat Albert. Magnifique! Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You can choose to watch this unedited on YouTube:

It’s our season finale, and the end of Bill’s regular participation on the show. You may wish to weep, but let your tears be of joy as well as reminiscence. We are re-joined by two of our favorite improv guests for a Team Play episode to talk ship of Theseus, philosophy vs. mythology vs. video games, Renaissance contemporaries, long-lived turtles, “realist” morality, goodbyes, and our final boardroom scene. Follow us @MarkLinsenmayer, @MisterSniffen, and @anthonyleblanc. You can choose to watch this on unedited video. PvI will continue with new (temporary? permanent? We don’t know) co-host Merry Mary Hynes. Also happening soon: Seth Paskin as guest! The image was swiped from here. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast!

Nessa teaches philosophy at Lone Star Community College and writes on the philosophy of humor. We’ve amazingly never had an episode specifically about this, so we thought we should get this on the table before we wrap our season (and Bill’s regular participation) and reach 100 episodes. We go through the main theories (superiority, incongruity/surprise, unconscious triggering, i.e. funny because it’s true on some level we don’t necessarily want to admit). Then Nessa (fictionally) becomes our podcast format consultant. Is there room for pugilism in philosophy? Is King of the Hill too real? Is the hilarity of a joke 90% in its delivery and details? We wrap up by considering the appeal of various stand-up comedians. Here’s the Dana Carvey clip by Colbert that Nessa refers to about Waiters Nauseated by Food. The image here is swiped from Instagram. As long-time readers here know, I try to find child drawings relevant to the title/topic, and have more or less despaired in finding good ones, so I am tentatively planning to shift strategies for the new season (as I’ve already done for some recent episodes). This one was a result of an image search for “child’s drawing comedian,” and I found this Instagram and misread it as being by the child, as opposed to being apparently a comedian’s self-portrait “with random marks by my son.” But given that it displays the drawing competence of a child (as would be anything I would personally attempt), it stays! Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You can choose to watch this on YouTube:

Recorded back in June, posting now as we near the end of our season and Bill’s tenure on the show, this episode now bleeds with dramatic irony. Mark and Bill discuss how to give a good speech, AI in academics, and we have a tear-stained visit to Empty Street. Though the Everything is Alive improv podcast has featured many an inanimate object, we do not believe a literal douche is among them, so you might want to reach out to them and suggest that. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Watch it on unedited video, if you’d prefer.

LA comedienne and Second City faculty member Mary (whom you no doubt already met in the Prelude to this episode), joins us to act out a pet sitting job interview, talk about sharing our public spaces with animals, and finally return to Empty Street to see if we can get some animal action going in the convenient mart/Taco Bell/Subway. In the post-game (which we’re including on this public episode because we’re so nice), we talk about Bill’s new academic studies and Mark’s upcoming Gen Con trip. (If you’re going to be at Gen Con Indy and want to connect, email me; maybe we can organize a lunch for anyone interested.) Yes, the fish peep dome is a real thing. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! Sponsors: Don’t wait until the next bite—protect your home with Bzigo. Go to bzigo.com/discountBUZZ10 to save 10% off. Go to surfshark.com/improv or use code IMPROV at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! You can choose to watch this on video.

What do you do when Bill doesn’t show up to the recording? You record for a bit anyway and get to know the guest! Meet Mary. Here’s her website.