The Exchanges

Q So not surprising with that kind of start, you know, our episodes about creativity, empathy, agency, human beings. So Let's start there. What, what do you think is essential about who we are as human beings and how creativity and empathy relate into them? And, and how does that inform what you do?

A When I was offered this gig, 10 years, 10 plus years ago, I had to think about it. Like I, I wasn't sure if I wanted it. And then I had to do the, I had to kind of do the math on it. I had to kind of dutch uncle myself about this and go, okay, what is it? What are we, what would be good about it? And on high on the list was live audience. Because there are a lot of other things, a lot of opportunities to do other things. I had a whole television show, all set, pilot, ready to go that I wanted to do. But when I got this, I went, oh, well, gosh, I do love being in front of a live audience because, you know, you know what's working. You can't make somebody find something funny anymore. You can make them love you. They just, it just happens or it doesn't happen. And the sense as you're working on a joke or where you're thinking about telling a joke, or even the moment, if it just occurs to in that moment, you're about to tell it there's, there's, you've already got your, all your empathetic, like mirror neurons firing in you to go, oh, how would I receive this joke? How might this play out in the mind of another person? I, it's kind of like fishing. Creativity is an imagination is, is An integral part of fishing, because you throw that line down into the water, and you know what the hook is, and you know what the bait is, and hopefully get some sense of what the movement of the wat…

AI assessment note: “all your empathetic, like mirror neurons firing in you to go, oh, how would I receive this joke?”

Q Yes. And community and what it means to like the, the, the parasocial, the theatrical experience, the, the interactivity. So what, what are some of the, the ways that you've been musing about AI in this context?

A A million years ago, when I was in New York, and I guess I'd come here to work for the Dana Carvey Show, and we had been canceled that summer, I just, through, through Hooker by Crook, I ended up being involved with News Corp's digital side, because I had a friend who worked for News Corp, worked for Uncle Rupi, and he, uh, they were trying to create something. Oh, God. Mindspring. Remember they owned my, remember mindspring.com? And I just had dinner with this guy one night, and he said, we're trying to figure out a way to turn this into a kind of, like, I don't know, like some sort of, like, performance space where people could get together, and there could be, like, some sort of, like, literally, like, little town he'd go to, there'd be venues, and I started talking about how improvisation would, because I was an improviser and had been in Second City for years, and how those things would interact nicely with interactive technology, because we used to do this thing on stage at Second City. We did it a few times called Global Village. Where we would get online and we would get suggestions from people all around the world about what they, what their day had been like. And then we would perform, we would be those people in common scenes together on stage, like somebody from sub-Saharan Africa, like, you know, someone from South America, some from Asia, someone from Europe, what…

AI assessment note: “using improvisation to create common performance spaces online. The technology wasn't there”