0:01

Hub and Spoke. Audio

0:03

Collective. Hi,

0:07

today we have a reversioned episode of

0:10

something we first reported in 2018. Here's

0:14

Nina Pazuki. Patrick! Nina.

0:17

So remember that show, that improv

0:20

show, Whose Line Is It Anyway? Oh

0:22

yeah, yeah, I really like that. It's

0:24

called Scene 2 Rep. Greg and Wayne,

0:26

you're gonna make up a scene. So

0:29

I like this particular challenge because they're

0:31

combining two kinds of

0:33

improv comedy and a

0:35

rapping. I'm real scared I'm getting

0:37

kinda freaky. I think the ship is getting

0:39

kinda leaky. I don't know what's out there,

0:41

it can't be matter. I'm gonna freak out

0:43

and then go squatter. Wait, wait a second,

0:45

wait, have fun. It's only a black hole,

0:47

I've got one. You gotta realize, I'm gonna

0:49

say this, you gotta see the self that

0:52

you get. You know, sometimes I imagine myself trying

0:54

to do that and I think, I can't

0:57

do it. I don't have the speed of thought. What about

0:59

you, have you ever tried? I did comedy

1:02

sports in high school, which was really

1:04

fun. I was never particularly good at

1:06

it, but I do like playing

1:08

games like Yes And. Me too. I

1:11

mean, I like all of those things

1:13

without really understanding anything that's going on

1:16

in our brains, right? I mean, like, how

1:19

do these people process thought and turn

1:21

it into language so quickly? From

1:29

Quiet Juice and the Linguistic Society

1:31

of America, this is subtitle. Stories

1:34

about languages and the people who

1:36

speak them. And sometimes speak them

1:38

with great humor and skill. On

1:41

the fly, without notes.

1:44

What's up with that? Hi

1:50

Nina, hi Patrick. It's Ari Daniel. He's

1:53

a science reporter and a former work

1:55

colleague of ours. He's made a few

1:57

podcast episodes with us. Well,

1:59

there's a- actually a lot to

2:01

be said about the intersection of language

2:03

and comedy. Naturally, language

2:05

is the material that a lot

2:08

of comedy gets made out of,

2:10

but it can be even more

2:12

elemental than that. I

2:14

see words and I see how

2:16

they can be kind of taken in different

2:18

directions in order to create setups

2:21

and punch lines. This is

2:23

Sami Wiegand. He's co-founder and

2:25

CEO of a group called

2:27

Speechless, a live improvised PowerPoint

2:29

show. I promise it's more

2:31

entertaining than it sounds. You should look it up. He

2:34

says writing a joke requires him to consider a

2:36

360 degree

2:39

view of language. He actually

2:41

views words as comedic portals.

2:44

A great example to teach people how to

2:46

write a joke is this old setup

2:48

that basically starts as, the

2:50

other day I took my father out. Basically

2:52

what you're trying to do is take a word

2:55

and build off of it, but in writing a

2:57

joke you're taking that word in a direction no

2:59

one assumes it's going. When you

3:01

hear the other day I took my father out,

3:03

you might be thinking, oh out for lunch, but

3:06

it could mean you assassinated

3:08

him or you took

3:11

him out of the closet. The

3:13

punch line could go in whatever direction. The other day

3:15

I took my father out and it was a big

3:17

surprise to my mother and now they're divorced. The other

3:19

day I took my father out. It was the first

3:21

time I've ever taken a priest to Buffalo Wild Wings.

3:24

When I hear someone say something in an

3:26

improv scene I'm looking for what I

3:29

sometimes think of as like a hyperlink on a

3:31

web page. What little word am I going to

3:33

click on and what is it going to bring

3:35

me to? That's really

3:37

interesting. This idea must

3:39

extend to lots of different kinds

3:41

of improvisational forms, right?

3:43

Yes, exactly. To explain,

3:46

let me introduce you to Anthony

3:48

Veneziale. Here

3:54

he is beatboxing with Sami Wiegand.

3:56

He's a master beatboxer among other

3:58

things. I would say

4:01

I am a professional improviser. I've done

4:03

improv and comedy for over 20 years

4:05

now. These days he

4:07

spends a lot of time as

4:09

a producer and director of that

4:11

same group I mentioned before, Speechless.

4:13

He's also a co-founder, and he's

4:16

quite proud, understandably so, of another

4:18

show he created called Freestyle Love

4:20

Supreme. Which is an improvised freestyle

4:22

rap concert, and I did

4:24

that along with a couple of dear friends who

4:26

have gone on to make very big things. Chris

4:29

Jackson, David Diggs, and Lin-Manuel

4:31

Miranda. Wow, that's quite a lisp.

4:34

It is. A night or two

4:36

before I spoke with Benetciale, I was

4:39

browsing YouTube and bumped into a video

4:41

featuring Freestyle Love Supreme, and

4:43

it blew me away. Ladies and

4:45

gentlemen, the word is sunrise. The

4:48

song begins. The only rule is

4:50

it has to center around the

4:52

word sunrise. It's working. It's nuanced.

4:55

And it's completely improvised. Okay,

4:57

growing up

5:00

in Maryland

5:03

as an Indian,

5:09

I was just so

5:14

excited to see that. But

5:18

my favorite part is this

5:20

guy, Utkarsh Ambudkar. He's

5:27

creating rhyming lyrics on the fly, and he's

5:29

doing it so damn quickly.

5:46

And then he gets to this part. Oh

6:34

yeah,

6:38

yeah, it was incredible. We all were just,

6:41

our faces all melted off for that one.

6:43

Utkarsh just takes it to a whole other level and

6:46

I think all of us, while

6:48

we were taping that segment, were like, did

6:50

that just happen? Because it feels like

6:53

you're pulling off this magic trick. Can

6:55

you just kind of describe what it

6:57

feels like when you're improvising? Like what

6:59

exactly is happening inside your

7:01

head? There's some kind of switch where

7:04

I'm like, let's let all the doors

7:06

open in the brain. Let's like let

7:08

everything sort of just go and don't

7:10

judge any of those impulses. And

7:12

I think what's happening is I've gotten

7:15

pretty good at allowing this part of

7:17

my brain called the medial prefrontal cortex,

7:20

have a little bit more rain there, which

7:22

allows for more self-expression and more doors to

7:25

be opened. And I've been able to kind

7:27

of start muting that other part of your

7:29

brain where your sort of inner critic comes

7:31

out. I think that's the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

7:34

Wow, this guy seems to know an awful

7:36

lot about his brain. Yeah. This

7:38

is the neurosciences building that we're just

7:40

entering now. The day I interviewed him,

7:43

he was being accompanied by research

7:45

assistant Lauren Jacobs into an fMRI

7:47

machine. That's one of those brain

7:49

scanners, right? Yes, a

7:51

functional magnetic resonance imaging machine.

7:53

And we'll head down the hallway on the right. metal.

8:01

Ari, why was going into an fMRI? I'll

8:04

tell you Nina, but first there's someone

8:07

else you need to meet, Charles Lim.

8:09

I'm the director of the hearing and

8:11

hearing loss clinical efforts here

8:14

at University of California San Francisco.

8:16

Lim is an otolaryngologist. Oh,

8:18

are you? Say that one again. Spell that.

8:21

Spell it. Well, I've got the script

8:23

I can cheat. I'll try it without looking. O-T-O-L-A-R-Y-N-G-O-L-O-G-I-S-T.

8:29

Oh, very good. Okay, you haven't told us what

8:31

it is. Oh, it's

8:33

an ENT, an ear,

8:36

nose, and throat doctor.

8:38

Otolaryngologist. Otolaryngologist. And

8:40

in addition to all that, he's got a thing for

8:42

music. I kind of had a

8:45

lifelong obsession with music ever

8:47

since I remember being alive, really. I

8:50

started off on piano, but then I switched to

8:52

saxophone when I was in middle school. My

8:55

house looks like a music store. I don't know,

8:57

60-inch gyms or something in my house of various kinds.

8:59

I'll kind of play anything I can get

9:01

my hands on. So

9:03

I have been playing jazz. I never

9:06

stopped. It's something I do almost all

9:08

the time, even today. Here's

9:18

a song that Lim wrote and performed.

9:24

And the older I got, the more and more

9:26

I was obsessed with this idea of trying to

9:29

understand music. Hence his desire to become a hearing

9:31

specialist. I found myself at the

9:33

NIH, the National Institutes of Health, where

9:35

I was doing functional brain imaging.

9:38

I started to see that there might be

9:41

an opportunity to look at the creative brain

9:43

in action if we did functional MRI scanning

9:45

of jazz musicians. Lim wound up doing this

9:47

study, and here's what he and his colleagues

9:50

found. When a musician

9:52

switches from a memorized state

9:56

where they're playing something, let's say the melody

9:58

of a tune, and they start improvising, on

10:00

that tune, a major change in functional activity

10:03

of the brain takes place. The

10:05

creative brain, especially in a

10:07

sort of spontaneously creative state

10:09

like jazz improvisation, is shutting

10:11

off big parts of the

10:13

conscious self monitoring apparatus in

10:16

order to allow the unimpeded flow

10:18

of novel ideas. We think that

10:20

in the case of jazz musicians, they're really,

10:22

really good, exceptionally good at allowing

10:24

their brains to get out of their own

10:27

ways while they're improvising. And it's not just

10:29

jazz musicians who get into this flow state.

10:31

It doesn't take very much to see the

10:33

parallels between what a great jazz musician is

10:35

doing and a great comedian is doing. This

10:38

whole concept of spontaneous flow and immediate improvisation,

10:40

I think freestyle rap is another one. And

10:42

so I had thought to myself, well

10:45

now that we've been working with musicians, it would

10:47

be nice to know how

10:49

universal these neural substrates of creativity

10:52

really are. Back

11:00

to the episode in a few

11:03

moments after I tell you about

11:05

the subtitle newsletter. Yes, we have

11:07

a fun little missive that'll pop

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or three weeks. It's a breezy

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subtitlepod.com slash

11:32

newsletter. That's

11:35

subtitlepod.com/newsletter. Charles

11:44

Lim Wanted to know how what

11:46

he saw in the brains of

11:48

those jazz musicians compares to the

11:50

brains of other improvisational artists to

11:53

see what's the same and what's

11:55

different inside people's minds as they

11:57

create on the fly. For.

12:01

A while this was nothing more than

12:03

an idea for lamb and yet she

12:05

hoped to scratch at some point until

12:07

Chicago Second City and improvisational theater troupe

12:09

got in touch with him. I got

12:11

an inquiry asking me to come visit

12:13

them because they rescind my research and

12:15

they wanna know more about it and

12:17

I was like most is perfect limb

12:19

went to one of their classes and

12:21

a couple of their shows. It got

12:24

him fired up and this was right

12:26

around the time that he moved to

12:28

San Francisco and when that happened. Anthony

12:30

Bennett Cia are professional. Improviser from

12:32

before.in touch. I had a

12:34

huge talent crush on Charles

12:36

Limb. I sent him an

12:38

email and I was like.

12:41

Dear. Charles Limb. You. Are

12:43

the best human beings that I now can

12:45

I take you to launch A And he

12:47

just moved here so luckily he liked didn't

12:49

have that many friends in San Francisco yet

12:51

and he was like sure. I'd love to

12:54

meet up and it was just one of

12:56

those you get to meet with your hero

12:58

A and then be you get to hear

13:00

that they're interested in all the things that

13:02

you're interested in and then I think it's

13:04

that sort of like stepbrother moment where you

13:06

like did we just become best friends. Yeah,

13:09

we. Just got to talking and

13:11

yeah, what can I say, the bromance

13:13

is a loss. It's

13:24

out of this bromance that the current

13:26

Sm are I've research study blossomed. granted

13:29

it took some it a rating we've

13:31

and said let's figure out what might

13:33

make sense inside of a functional Magnetic

13:35

Resonance imaging machine or because you're not

13:38

going see too many improv scenes happening

13:40

and and F M R I just

13:42

in terms of the cost alone but

13:45

also the staging it's hard to functional.

13:47

Mri scanner is not in any way.

13:50

The same thing as being on stage and comedy

13:52

club. It's just not. You have to realize that

13:54

you're doing a science experiment, not putting on a

13:57

show and so you have to find that sweet

13:59

spot between. Designing. Experiment

14:01

that feels kinda like what it

14:03

naturally seals are to do that

14:05

activity, but also one that is

14:07

controlled, structured and scientifically rigorous enough

14:10

that you can actually gain meaningful

14:12

data. It took a lot of

14:14

work to get it right, and

14:16

lots of back and forth between

14:18

Lamb and his team and the

14:21

net Cia and his team. How

14:23

exactly do you captures the magic

14:25

of an improvisational moment inside a

14:27

brain scanner? How do you isolate

14:29

the creative impulse. Ultimately,

14:31

they did develop something they

14:34

were happy with. The resulting

14:36

steady consists of pairs of

14:38

tasks, one that relies on

14:40

spontaneous improvisational thinking and another

14:42

that control that depends on

14:44

information that's been memorized. This

14:46

allows for a straightforward comparison

14:48

of the subjects brain. when

14:50

performing the two tasks, you

14:52

need to have a control

14:54

condition rican almost subtract that

14:56

stuff out. So. That was

14:58

left over is kind of creativity. So.

15:01

To speak which brings us back to the net.

15:03

C L A inside the S M R I.

15:12

C sign of his say. This

15:15

is Lauren Jacobs again who works in

15:18

Charles Limbs Lab. The baseline scan

15:20

takes five. Minutes to execute.

15:22

Once it's complete, the experiment

15:24

begins in earnest. Okay,

15:27

how you doing Anthony's. I'm

15:30

doing well. Okay, just as a reminder, the

15:33

first game we're going to be playing his

15:35

yes and and so I. You're here for

15:37

sentences that begin with the first says as

15:39

a well known seeing it for the control

15:41

we want you to respond with yes and

15:43

and then the full it for the improv

15:45

section. Just go ahead and do whatever you

15:47

want as long as you're saying yes and

15:50

and use one word from the sentence you

15:52

heard some this. One

15:54

of the idioms begins with roses

15:57

are Red Jacobs Authors roses are

15:59

Red. Like the velvet curtain of in

16:01

the theater. First. Fun at

16:03

Cia. respond. Improvisational. It. Then

16:15

he responds with the expected second half

16:17

of the idiom. Or

16:21

put another. Game is called three things.

16:24

In this game, you will have five seconds to come

16:26

up with three things that fit into a given. Category

16:28

for the control. We want you

16:31

to respond with one Two Three for numbers

16:33

are A D C for letters and Red,

16:35

White and Blue for colors. Okay, you ready?

16:39

Or any without the rapid fire

16:41

game. It's categories begin. First

16:44

category: Musicians: song, Next

16:49

category awards. Category

16:54

asked her category the last

16:56

one Phone apps. Than

17:08

the control. Et

17:25

cetera et cetera to stay on

17:27

takes about an hour and minute.

17:29

Cla is just one of numerous

17:31

improv comedians taking part in the

17:33

experiment, so we're very much in

17:35

the preliminary phases of looking at

17:37

Data Charles limb again. But I

17:39

will tell you this: you sing.

17:41

Vast differences between the improvise and

17:43

comedians brain envied memorize comedians brain

17:45

sort of in the way that

17:47

we saw a big differences between

17:49

the jasmine sunscreen, so we're quite

17:51

convinced that. The state

17:54

of creativity is a different functional brain

17:56

sentence measurable and that is comedians are

17:58

of fantastic and of. A

18:00

population of people to look at this

18:02

intriguing question within. Okay

18:07

sorry is there is a take away for the

18:09

rest of us. Like those of us who are

18:11

to jazz musicians. Or professional. Improvisers

18:13

or rappers. Yasmina.

18:16

There is, I think there are

18:18

two. Actually, First Limb says these

18:20

studies have a lot to say

18:23

about language, which for all of

18:25

us is an improvisational medium. Conversations

18:27

tend to be generated spontaneously in

18:30

the moment. Little of what we

18:32

say to each other is pre

18:35

rehearsed or scripted or committed to

18:37

memory. That is a fundamental attribute

18:39

of what it means to be

18:42

human, the idea of responding to

18:44

something that you didn't. Anticipate

18:47

happening. I think that

18:49

creative arts that utilize language

18:51

whether it's in and

18:53

recited poetry, freestyle, rap, or

18:56

comedic improvisation will all

18:58

help us understand that. The

19:01

language classes of the brain or

19:03

a flexible. Okay, so

19:05

so what about the second take away?

19:07

Well, it's that Improv isn't a thing

19:09

that only professionals that get paid to

19:12

do it up on stage are able

19:14

to accomplish. Oh so like those of

19:16

us who are not paid to speak

19:18

professionally and I just chatting like you

19:21

and I are now. is that what

19:23

he's talking about? Yeah, but it goes

19:25

beyond that. It goes beyond language. Improvisation

19:27

is a crucial part of what it

19:30

means to be human. Thing about

19:32

when you drive home from work and you're

19:34

improvising your way through the traffic? In the

19:36

interest, in terms of happen, you know which

19:38

general dressing you're going to go on, but

19:40

you don't quite know what's going to be

19:42

doing any particular given moment of the driver.

19:44

Whatever my be in. So there's so many

19:46

forms of improvisation, there may not be great

19:48

art. But. It's still pretty remarkable that the

19:50

brain can do it, and I think that the. Artistic,

19:53

Versions are just the finest versions

19:55

of the human brain can produce.

19:57

Limb invites people to embrace more.

19:59

Him. Proposition in their lives since

20:01

it seems to have real impacts

20:04

on the brain. So. Far

20:06

we've seen that the Creative Rain

20:08

is generally a more activated dane

20:10

than the non creative brain in

20:12

the areas that process language. And

20:15

in areas that process sensory stimuli,

20:17

to me, it's a a really

20:19

strong argument and snap proof, but

20:21

a strong arguments that. We.

20:24

Should not be. Eliminating

20:26

the arts or creative activities from

20:29

things like the school systems and

20:31

educational plan. This. Is

20:33

how our brains learned to generate new

20:35

ideas and new solutions to problems that

20:37

we didn't even know existed. So.

20:39

This sounds like a really. Big.

20:42

Potential take away tool as

20:44

as that if we allow

20:46

this stuff to just wither,

20:48

then we're gonna lose out

20:50

big time in how we

20:53

conceive. Making. Things better in

20:55

the future. Yeah, exactly.

20:57

And Anthony than at Cia. Couldn't

20:59

agree more with your Patrick Seat

21:01

searches for opportunities to improvise wherever

21:04

he goes. A do have

21:06

one day a month with my older

21:08

daughter because she seven out can kind

21:10

of handle it where she gets a

21:12

yes, dates and anything she asks. Anything

21:14

she wants to do as long here

21:16

the rules as long as she doesn't

21:19

hurt anyone or for her since then

21:21

we can do it. She wasn't immediately

21:23

like I want to eat ice cream

21:25

every minute. Of the day she was

21:27

like can I go to the parts

21:29

that I want to choose It's kind

21:31

of amazing that when you give somebody

21:33

that latitude. And and maybe

21:35

this is because I haven't encouraged her

21:37

to dream big hats but they were

21:40

really small asks nothing was crazy. Can

21:42

we go swimming today? Absolutely. Can

21:44

we get pizza for dinner? Shore? It

21:46

was. It wasn't like can I go and

21:49

stab a person. yeah

21:51

he us yeah that be problematic of out

21:53

of the gate it was into body stuff.

21:57

Like as know what I had in mind with this exercise

21:59

is. Exactly.

22:02

Turns. Out body stabbing isn't so good

22:04

for the brain, creative or otherwise. it

22:07

kind of deprives it of blood and

22:09

oxygen assisted. a fifth. Oregon

22:14

you you can hear his

22:16

science stories on Npr. Everything

22:18

from that daily singing regimen

22:20

of zebra finches to why

22:22

certain astronauts who when they're

22:24

up in space a prone

22:26

to getting Russia's I think

22:28

you'll agree he's a winning

22:30

stories. Will. Post photos and

22:33

video from the story in the episode

22:35

transcript. just follow the link in the

22:37

show notes You can do as a

22:39

favor and review us on Apple podcasts

22:41

or wherever you listen to. A review

22:43

can be two or three sentences or

22:45

just a single word. Go. On

22:47

Do it. It'll make you feel good.

22:53

Thanks. This time to Louis Cronin,

22:55

Tina, Toby Sucre Talent Hari and

22:57

to the World Public Radio programs.

22:59

Special thanks to Alison Shout who

23:01

writes the newsletter and manages or

23:04

social media. Thanks also to the

23:06

Linguistics Society of America who's annual

23:08

meeting I went to earlier this

23:10

month. Nice to see old friends

23:12

and meet some new ones and

23:14

to listen to link with panel

23:16

presentations where they talk about the

23:19

research they've been doing, some of

23:21

which will inevitably find it's way.

23:23

Onto this point cause I'm very grateful

23:25

to everyone at that event. Subtitle

23:27

is a member of the Hub

23:29

and spoke with your collective were

23:31

bunch of independently minded punk Costas

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who well I think most of

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us stop thinking about an episode

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with a bunch of questions in

23:40

our heads if we want to

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know more about something be a

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science see tacky Rt language he

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if we want to know it

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let's hear it for some of

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the hub and spoke podcast Nocturne

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Soon ish Print is dead, Long

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live Prince and many. More. Check

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them all out of. The spoke

24:00

would he have.that's it for today.

24:02

Thanks for listening. Will be back

24:04

in a couple of weeks. Has

24:15

and spoke audio selected.