The Channel-Episode 4-Freestyle Love Supreme with Anthony Veneziale

What a delight it was to sit down with Anthony Veneziale (Two-Touch) in his lovely recording studio in San Francisco to discuss all things improv, channeling, sports, music, art and what inspires him to do what he does.

Early on in this episode, it occurred to me, somewhat unexpectedly, that improv is actually one of the purest forms of channeling!

Anthony is the conceiver and co-founder of Freestyle Love Supreme, for which he won a Tony Award and was nominated for a Grammy.  

Anthony is also the co-founder and CEO of Freestyle Plus, a training and game developer that has built the world's first improv-inspired, science-backed, AI-powered gaming portal.  

He's the designer of a UCSF brain research trial on the positive effects of improv thinking along with Dr. Charles Lim. 

Transcript

Speaker 7 0:11

Hello and welcome to the channel podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm so grateful that you're here. I am your host, Maia Taub. I created this podcast so that I could talk to artists and creative people about their creative process, where they find and how they access creativity. I'm particularly interested in the idea of where their ideas come from and how the artist becomes a channel for their art. I've heard artists say that something was channeled through them, that they didn't create it. It just came through their vessel, if you will. Or perhaps they didn't create it alone, that there's a co-creative, co-collaborative process at play. I also have my own experience of channeling, which I'm hoping to be able to practice and play with in these conversations. My guest today is Anthony Veniziale. Anthony is the co-founder and CEO of Freestyle Plus, a training and game developer that has built the world's first improv-inspired, science-backed, AI-powered gaming portal. He is the conceiver and co-creator of the acclaimed Freestyle Love Supreme for which he won a Tony Award and was nominated for a Grammy. He's the designer of a UCSF brain research trial on the positive effects of improv thinking along with Dr. Charles Lim. Anthony is also the first TED presenter to give a totally improvised TED talk on the main stage of TED. He is the proud father of two powerful daughters and the life partner of Dr. Carecia Catalani. Anthony, welcome and thank you so much for being here. So, Anthony, you are actually my first guest who I did not have a pre-existing relationship with. Oh, cool. I know I'm very excited. This is the real first real podcast. Um, Anthony and I were introduced by our mutual friend Nico Berry. Shout out to Nico. Um, and you and Nico play soccer together.

Speaker 3 2:37

That is true. Yes. We both play in like a pickup league and then competitively against each other uh uh the over 40 league at Crocker Amazon.

Speaker 7 2:46

That's awesome. I love that. I love that. Um so interestingly, I I feel like these things all kind of come together in ways that are somewhat mysterious. But Nico mentioned you several times. Like when I was talking about my my podcast and starting in it, and you know, he was my first guest, and he kept saying, Yeah, I play soccer with this guy, and he's a freestyle rapper, but like he also has like a nine to five job. And he mentioned you several times. And so then, you know, after we recorded, I was like, Can you put me in touch with your friend Anthony? And so we got in touch and we decided to do this podcast. And when I was thinking about the idea of channeling, it sort of dawned on me that, like, and you can tell me whether this is accurate or not, but improv is channeling or has the potential to be like the ultimate channeling experience.

Speaker 3 3:50

I love that. I think that's such an interesting way of putting it. But yeah, for my understanding of what I sort of refer to as channeling is turning off your judgment and fully investing in the moment you find yourself in and allowing the tuning fork of the moment to guide you. And I think improv is an incredible tool to hone that skill for sure.

Speaker 5 4:16

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7 4:17

And do you have an experience of channeling? I guess this question is do you channel every time you do improv? And or do you have an experience of channeling that stands out to you or that you could talk about or that felt sort of? I think there is a co-creation with some other consciousness. At least that's kind of my understanding of what channeling is, is that you have to be open to co-creating with some other. So yeah, I would love to hear about your experience of that.

Speaker 3 4:57

Ooh, this is a big one and really cool question to dive into. Um, I would say there's I'm a bit two-minded on it. One, which is when I freestyle rap, I try to have unimpeded thoughts directly at my access, so that I'm a bit having an improv scene between two parts of my brain.

Speaker 8 5:19

Okay.

Speaker 3 5:20

One part of my brain that helps with that is effortful planning. So that's your dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. The part of your brain that's like, gosh, we should have gotten an MBA if I'm gonna be in business. I need to uh take a left, uh, you know, I should know in advance all the turns I'm taking. Um, it's it's your judging brain, and it's a really cool part of your brain. It's very useful. And then there's another part of your brain that I think I do an improv scene with between those two partners, and that's the medial lateral prefrontal cortex. That's your state of flow.

Speaker 8 5:48

Okay.

Speaker 3 5:49

That part of your brain, you're like, that I think most people might associate with channeling.

Speaker 8 5:54

Yeah.

Speaker 3 5:54

Uh it feels a bit divine, it feels a bit like you are tapping into a power higher than you. And I think that other humans are divine. And so, in communication with others to do improv, that's what you need to really invest in. And so, absolutely, I am channeling. Um, and and that's sort of like one version of it is A, I'm doing it internally between two parts of my brain. So I'm sort of having an improv scene between those two parts of my brain, and then B, doing the same thing with my improv partner, especially when it's just scene-based work. Um, there's a difference between music and scene-based work. So a lot of the music work that I do that has expectations, tropes, and parameters that I have to fit in. A hip-hop beat, a hip-hop expectation of rhyme, those are all effortful planning parts. But everything inside of it, everything that's being either expounded upon as an autobiographical moment uh or a scene that I'm creating with another human, that is all totally spontaneous channeling.

Speaker 8 6:57

Okay.

Speaker 3 6:57

To the best of my ability. Um, and and really listening and taking in what the suggestions were. And so for me, I have these tuning forks that I can kind of listen to, right? Because, like, if the suggestion from the audience is the word gesticulate, that's a tuning fork. Like, I have to be guided by that.

Speaker 7 7:17

So you have to turn tune into gesticulating, whatever that means to you.

Speaker 3 7:23

That's right. Exactly. And that's the part that I think a lot of improvisers and or even just performers can sometimes give their agency away on because they're like, oh, it came from the audience. I have to do what they think gesticulation means. And I think that's a major misstep. Because if you don't put yourself behind it, then what do you have to build it on? Like there's just nothing there. Because I I can't control what the audience thinks gesticulate is. I can only control what I think gesticulate is. Yeah. So it's a small discrepancy.

Speaker 7 7:57

That is so interesting because what it makes me think of is empathy. So as a therapist, like I have been, I've spent my whole career tuning into my experience of empathy, which if someone's talking about grief, I don't know what their grief feels like, but I know what my grief feels like. And so I wonder about, you know, sort of, I've never thought about this before.

Speaker 6 8:27

Yeah.

Speaker 7 8:27

But just sort of um like a tuning fork. Yeah. It's it's the same thing. You're tuning into what what your experience is of that offering that the audience member gave you. Yeah. And in the same way, I'm tuning into my client's experience. So yeah, it's really about like tapping into something inside yourself. Yes. And you have to do it on the spot.

Speaker 3 8:56

And that's the part that takes experience and training, right? Like the more you expose yourself to that ability, the faster I think you can access it. So that's not, and that's not a small feat. Like, that's that 10,000-hour rule that I think, you know, for better or for worse, might might be a myth that Malcolm Gladwell created. Um, but having sort of the ability to really have experienced it a lot allows you to kind of trust that process for yourself.

Speaker 7 9:26

Yeah, absolutely. And so you've had a lot of experience doing this.

Speaker 3 9:31

Uh I have probably done Freestyle Love Supreme, the show, well over 3,000 times.

unknown 9:37

Wow.

Speaker 3 9:38

Yeah. I mean, we we formed it in 2003. Okay. So we've been around for a while. Um, and we've done it, uh, gosh, I want to say in at least five different countries. We've done a Broadway two times on Broadway. We've done a national tour. Um, and then my my the nine to five job that Nico's referring to is this company called Freestyle Plus. And we go into major Silicon Valley and otherwise companies and say, hey, improv actually is a great tool for you to learn to handle uncertainty. And that is right where the world is right now. I mean, all of these new tools that are constantly being rolled out and affecting humans is really causing a lot of anxiety and panic around what if I don't know?

Speaker 8 10:24

Yeah.

Speaker 3 10:24

And the hope for for us at Freestyle Plus is well, what if anxiety and uncertainty brings out your best?

Speaker 7 10:31

Mmm, I love that. As I don't think that's what we think, you know. I think that we think we have to plan everything and study everything and know everything, and that we have to have certainty.

Speaker 3 10:42

Yeah, a hundred percent. And it's so funny because I think that's like the biggest myth of all.

Speaker 7 10:49

Can you say more about that? Because I'm really curious about that, just yeah, personally.

Speaker 3 10:54

I'm pretty lucky that I had a an incredible English teacher in high school say, Hey, guess what? Being alive is being in danger. Uh, and this whole year we're gonna explore that that theory. And it just really opened up my eyes of oh right, everything we kind of take for granted about like waking up and going to school, you name it, it's all unknown. Even though we say it's known, it's not. I could have skipped school that day, right? Like there's there's all these thousands of choices that we kind of sublimate and and give over at a certain point to this concept of certainty. And it's really healthy for the evolutionary brain to do that because it takes an inordinate amount of mental capacity, not to mention glucose and receptors that send thought, to work towards those choices every day. So humans need to create pattern and expectations of certainty so that we're not exhausted. Um, and some of it's exhaustion, some of it's just entropy around not needing to make unnecessary decisions. Our evolutionary brain was designed to handle lions chasing us. Right. And we get an email and we imagine that's a lion chasing us. It's not. Right. So there's not really anything there to help bridge that gap between what our evolutionary brain is capable of and what our godlike technology is surrounding us by. And that's where we kind of like squarely find ourselves. And I think that that is like the the main thing in there is that huge change is always constant. So, how do we help our the brain that's like uh wants and desires entropy and just not having to do anything because it knows it needs to store that glucose for starvation, for being chased, for hunting other things? None of that really exists anymore. And what is it that's gonna best suit humans in this moment that we need right now? That's that's kind of what I think of as like the truth of what humanity is facing. And uh there's just so many divisive tools being used right now to help a few people make a lot of money. And that's sort of the narrative that we're caught in. And those are all presumed. A lot of those are presumed, right? I mean, my kids are like social media. It's a pr that wasn't a presumption when I was growing up, but it is for them, right? To have this access, unfettered access to all their friends' thoughts, all their friends' intimate moments, they're mostly successes, because that's typically what's get what gets posted. Right. Um, and there's just this false preconceived notion that that's just normal. And normal keeps changing. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Um, and it's dangerous. It's it's a dangerous thing that normal keeps changing. Um, and it doesn't have to be. And it doesn't have to be used as a leveraging tool by people trying to sell us stuff, but it is.

Speaker 8 14:04

Because capitalism.

Speaker 3 14:05

Because we are currently in the narrative of capitalism, right? Like I think that is the predominant order that we are also unwittingly making constant choices around and towards. So, what version of capitalism do you make choices around and try to fit into? Is A something you can unpack and like make an individual choice around and then literally try to commit to those? Yeah. That's hard. Those are not like those are all that all takes a lot of extra effort that most people don't have time to do. Yeah.

Speaker 7 14:35

Yeah. I want to just kind of back up for a minute and ask you to talk a little bit about Freestyle Love Supreme because you kind of glazed over that. And I don't think I did not know what that was. Yeah. Um, and I don't know how many of my listeners if you could talk about that.

Speaker 3 14:53

I would love to hear about that and how that came about. And absolutely. And it's funny, I mean, I never imagine anyone has ever heard of Freestyle Love Supreme. So I'm sorry if I was like, yeah, that thing.

Speaker 7 15:02

Yeah, well, I I told you that if I was talking to one of my dear friends yesterday and they had heard about it. So plenty of people, I'm sure, have heard about it.

Speaker 3 15:10

That's amazing. That's amazing, and what like a cool thing to imagine the small pebble you you know put into the ripple of the pond goes outward. Uh, Freestyle of Supreme is a fully improvised rap concert. It was started in 2003 while I was working on a show called In the Heights with Lynn Manuel Miranda. Lynn and I went to Wesleyan together. Um, I had graduated before him, and then after he graduated, uh, my production company, which was called Backhouse Productions, which had Tommy Cale, John Buffalo Mailer, and Neil Patrick Stewart sort of as the founders. And Tommy Cale went on to direct In the Heights and Hamilton, and he is now married to Michelle Williams, and they have three awesome kids and a fourth stepchild from her previous marriage to Heath Ledger. Uh, and she actually goes to Wesleyan now, like it's a small round after all. Um, so all that to say, uh, I started Freestyle of Supreme while I was working on In the Heights during like breaks. So we would take a break, and then Lynn and I would go in freestyle. And I was like, Lynn, I feel like this is a show. It wants to kind of like be in front of people. And he was like, okay, let's give it a shot. But we had to find more people. So we had like a DJ who had beats, and then we had like another vocalist, my friend Darren, uh Lorenzo, who came in and like sang. Um, and we just kind of kept adding on to it. And then Tommy came, uh, Thomas Cale, like a person who has been a longtime contributor and like one of my favorite like collaborators. He came in, saw it, and he was like, I've got some ideas. And then we kind of like shaped it a bit more. And then we went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the US Comedy Arts Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We kind of like cut our teeth on the road, like rapid prototyping this on the streets, busking and getting people to come and see us. And then we got shortlisted for like all the awards, and then in the heights went to Broadway. And we kind of had to find other people who knew how to do this thing and then train them as well. So then we found a couple other people, this guy, Udkar Sh Ambutkar, who is on the show Ghosts, he's the star of Ghosts on CBS, James and Roll Eigelhart, um, and of course, Chris Jackson was already part of it, our beatboxer, Chris Sullivan. Um, we just have this crew that I think use these skill sets and they've like changed the face of the American theater and now American entertainment at all, period.

Speaker 7 17:26

And why, like, where did like rap and hip hop and beatboxing, like, where did all of that come from? Like, was that something that you grew up with or were interested in? Or how did you become a freestyle rapper?

Speaker 3 17:40

Like, that's just not typical, super typical, right? Um, gosh, I I I loved hip-hop. So I grew up in the early 90s. Um, and that is the like, you know, a lot of people point to it as the golden age of hip-hop. I think every generation imagines their particular moment is the golden age of hip hop, um, just like rock and roll. Uh, but I had a very active mind and I couldn't get to sleep when I was a kid. And I just had big thoughts, and it was, you know, like the world, right? Like, where does all this go? And what happens after we die? And this is when I was like in second and third grade. And I remember wanting to sort of quiet that brain at night so that I've got to be a good thing. It sounded scary for a big young child. Totally, big, big thoughts. And and I would pray a lot as well. I was raised Catholic. Um, and I started listening to music to go to sleep. And the first thing I listened to was Pockabell Canon, and its melodic repetition set to ocean waves, was like just soothing to my soul.

Speaker 7 18:44

Was that something that your parents suggested you do? Or did you just come up with that soothing technique on your own? I came up with that soothing technique on my own. Wow, yeah. That's impressive. And did you have like a walkman? Like, what were you listening to it on?

Speaker 3 18:56

I well, this was a big fight between my brother and I because I didn't have a walkman. And so I would play it and it would drive him crazy because we shared a room. Right. So I have four brothers, and you know, it was a cramped space. Uh, but I eventually was able to convince my parents to get me at least the like things that would plug into that little stereo and then put headphones on. Okay. And so I would listen to it in headphones. And pockable canon, I mean, it's the it's the math of music, right? Like it's like a dun-da-da-dun-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dun-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It's just thirds, it's just progressing down this, you know, really fun, very human-centered version of how progression of music happens. Bobby Darren talks about this bot better than anybody else, but the pentatonic scale, it steps down in thirds and then it just keeps repeating. Uh and it has then also like these arpeggiations that go over top of it, which are really soothing to human brains as well. And like, you know, I know all this stuff now. I had no idea about anything.

Speaker 7 19:56

Well, you didn't know it intellectually, but you knew that it was doing something to your body.

Speaker 3 20:00

Totally, totally. Uh, and then believe it or not, the next thing that I started to listen to at night to put me to sleep was rap. There's something very mathematical about rap. So I love playing Tetris as a kid, it was like my favorite game. And I would just play it for a super long time, and I would dream in those patterns at night sometimes. Like I'd see the different shapes and I would move them in my mind. That is exactly what hip-hop does with the human language, with English. Wow. It's just making shapes and putting them into the different spots that they are supposed to fit in to kind of complete the expectation. And the expectation in hip-hop is rhyming. So rhyming is very mathematical, like it really has like a drive to it that is and the beats, you know, most hip-hop in that time when I was growing up, somewhere between 86 and 98 BPMs. It's like kind of got this like very rhythmic thing to it. And then the beat and the rhyme was almost always delivered at the end of the line.

Speaker 8 20:57

Okay.

Speaker 3 20:58

So it's just that expectation, and then I memorized hundreds of songs. I would just listen to whole albums as I was going to sleep. Tribe Call Quest, Low End Theory, kind of kicked it off, and then De La Soul, Mind State. Like, I just devoured Diggable Planets, and then it was Wu-Tang Clan, and like I just kept listening to hip-hop, and I had a catalog of hip-hop. Oh, the roots, and then the roots came, and then that changed everything for me because I were a live band with hip-hop. I was like that, because I played music and my dad was a musician. Um, and so yeah, I think I just had a catalog of preferred neural network around rhyming.

Speaker 7 21:38

Wow, wow. And did you at the time you didn't know any of that? No, you just knew that that was helping you to fall asleep or to distract yourself from the disturbing, overwhelming thoughts that you were having. Yep, exactly. And then when did you start to go public with that? Like when did you start letting people know, or when did you? You start like improvising yourself around that?

Speaker 3 22:04

Yeah, I think the the first time going public with it was so I was I was an athlete and I played soccer most of my life. Uh and I still play soccer now, as you know, because of Nico. Uh but I got kicked off of my college team. So I was at Wesleyan, uh, got into a little bit of a disagreement with one of the coaches, and then I was cut from the team.

Speaker 8 22:23

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 22:24

And two days later, and I remember calling my dad and being like really upset. Like I mean, my brother's an all-American, like soccer was like a big deal in my house. And it's it's a big deal in this house. Yeah.

Speaker 7 22:36

Do both of your daughters play soccer?

Speaker 3 22:38

They do. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, and I think I told you, but my older daughter just won the state championship in California.

Speaker 7 22:43

It's amazing. Lowell high school.

Speaker 3 22:45

Let's go, Lowell. Go cards. Um, so yeah, so I was I was a serious soccer player. I got cut from the team. I called my dad. He was like, you never know why these things happen.

Speaker 7 22:55

Mm-hmm. That was nice, actually. It's wise advice.

Speaker 3 22:58

Yeah, absolutely. So good. Way to go, Dad. Um, and then two days later, I auditioned for an improv troupe at my school at Wesleyan called Gag Reflex. And I remember seeing them.

Speaker 7 23:08

And how did that, like, how did you decide to pivot that? I mean, maybe that doesn't seem drastic to you. Yeah. But in my mind, from soccer to improv doesn't seem like a direct route.

Speaker 3 23:21

So I did. Yeah, that's true. But I did a ton of theater in high school.

Speaker 7 23:25

Okay.

Speaker 3 23:25

So after I got over, I had a speech impediment in elementary school. After I got over that, I was like, people need to hear this thing. And I started auditioning. And my brother, so I wanted to do everything my brothers did.

Speaker 5 23:36

Are you the youngest?

Speaker 3 23:37

I'm the youngest. Okay. Yeah, I'm the youngest. And so there's this sense of like.

Speaker 7 23:40

And how much older is the oldest?

Speaker 3 23:43

Like, what's the range between 10 years older? Okay. 10, 7, 5, 4, and me. Okay. So yeah. And they were all great in their own unique world, right? Like my one brother, Peter was an army ranger and like an incredible soldier. Like wow, intense. Intense guy. My brother Johnny, bodybuilder, rugby player, and like the just kindest and funniest guy. Like that's a nice combination. So great. My brother Joe, very serious athlete, all American, then coaches. He coaches college now. And my brother Mike was an artist, like incredible painter and then performing artist as well.

Speaker 7 24:24

Wow. Was he the first? I mean, I know you said that your dad is a musician.

Speaker 24:28

Yeah.

Speaker 7 24:28

Um, but was that brother the first one to sort of like be be more artistically? Because it sounds like the the rest of your brothers were very like physically oriented and sports and bodybuilding and yeah.

Speaker 3 24:41

No, he was he was the first sort of like celebrated artist in the family.

Speaker 7 24:45

And he was celebrated.

Speaker 3 24:47

Yeah. I mean, my parents loved his work and his painting. His paintings are still in my parents' house. Like, and because he had went on and started a gallery and did all this other stuff. He also was a great chef. Like he was Jerry Seinfeld's person. Super creative. Wow. Wow. Like one of these guys. And he and I now work together at Freestyle Plus.

Speaker 7 25:04

So he works with you. What is his role there?

Speaker 3 25:08

Oh, he's our director of sales.

Speaker 7 25:10

Okay.

Speaker 3 25:11

Yeah. So he makes sure I show up at the right place at the right time and handles proposals and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, so that was they all did those things, and I was like, I should probably do all of those things because I'm I'm the youngest, and if I'm gonna get any attention, it's by being exceptional.

Speaker 8 25:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3 25:32

Um, and then I went like another step beyond also and was like, I have to be the best at school. And so I was like, how do I also get great grades? I don't think I over-emphasized, I just school came a bit easy to me. I can memorize things really fast, and unfortunately, that's what passes as intelligence in most public schools, even still, yeah, is the ability to memorize. Right. I know those are different things now, but back then it was like, oh, okay, I memorized all these things that's on the test. I did well. So I did theater in high school as well because I could do both. I could play soccer, and then they moved the rehearsals to be after soccer practice so that I could be a part of it. Incredibly lovely. Like, you know, because my brother was sort of like the star. And then they were like, he graduated, and there were three more years left of me. And they were like, Anthony, you have to fill your brother's shoes on the shows, you have to do the main roles. Because my school was small, it wasn't like a huge school, and there were maybe two other guys who did theater, and the rest were girls, almost always the case, right? Great odds, by the way.

Speaker 7 26:36

Yeah, for you, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 26:38

For a heterosexual man, really good. Um, so yeah, so then I'm in college. I didn't do much theater stuff my first year because I was like, I need to commit to the soccer team, and yeah, and they expected that of you as well. We traveled a lot. Even that summer, we went to Germany and played in Germany for the summer. It was awesome.

Speaker 7 26:57

I loved it with Wesleyan? Yeah.

Speaker 3 27:00

Oh, that's we played all these youth development teams from Bayern Munich, Düsseldorf, like Kit Spiel. It was incredible. Yeah, that sounds amazing, like a dream. Absolutely a dream. And and they moved me into positions, and I was playing forward, and I scored like five goals that summer. It was like one of those things like where'd this come from?

Speaker 7 27:18

Had that not been your position before, were you a defensive player?

Speaker 3 27:22

Midfield.

Speaker 7 27:22

Okay.

Speaker 3 27:22

Typically center midfield. I had a pretty good engine. I could run for a super long time and not lose, you know, my intensity of running throughout the whole game.

Speaker 8 27:30

Yeah.

Speaker 3 27:31

So I was typically a center midfielder, and then my senior year in high school, I did play defense because they needed me to like just shut down anything that came through.

Speaker 8 27:40

Yeah.

Speaker 3 27:41

Um, but yeah, I got moved forward. That was super fun. And then we came back and I got cut from the team.

Speaker 7 27:48

Okay. Can I ask you a question about that? So, were you aware or are you aware now of any way that the theater was helping your soccer? Like, a hundred percent.

Speaker 3 28:02

Okay. I mean, communication skills, and that's the other thing about being a center midfielder. You are literally the orchestrator of it. You have to talk a lot. A thousand percent. You have to be looking over your shoulder, you have to know exactly where everyone is on the field and why, and get them positionally organized. Like that's kind of the thing. Same with the center back, like center back on defense, your positional organization.

Speaker 7 28:22

That's what my son plays. Heck a year.

Speaker 3 28:24

Center back. So you know this well. Um, so yeah, communication skills from the theater world absolutely have always been. And then I never look at opponents as um, I never look at opponents as as someone who I should be in a fight with. Opponents to me are same as my teammates, they just happen to be on the other side of the field. I love competition. I love getting to play and keeping it playful. So that's another thing I do on the field too.

Speaker 7 28:54

Which I think is kind of unique. Like, I do not think that all of the boys on my son's team are thinking like that. I think that the other team mostly is the opponent.

Speaker 3 29:06

I think it's a shame because soccer is such a collective sport. And to imagine that somehow this team is is evil or they're like bad people, then they're trying to cheat you out of it. I hear that a lot from parents. Like, I go to games and I'll hear parents say, Oh, they're cheating. It's like to what end? Yeah. Right? Is this simply because you want to win every single game? Right. And if that's why you're out there playing soccer, I got news for you. You're not gonna win every game. I I can attest to that. You know, and and you're always gonna be, and I think that's such an important lesson of sports. Yeah. Like you're always gonna have tough times. Right. And if you vilify the people who are quote unquote that that are trying to do the same thing as you, then you're it's a zero-sum game.

Speaker 7 29:53

Yeah. And I just to clarify, I don't think that his teammates are vilifying the other team, but I do think they think of them as their opponent.

Speaker 3 30:03

Well, I mean, look, yeah, I I I do think that there's like, yes, it's competition, and they're trying to win, and we're trying to win. Right. My favorite quote of all time is Sue Bird. Well, not okay. My favorite quote about sports of all time is by Sue Bird. She is one of the best basketball players in the history of the sport.

Speaker 7 30:20

Is she related to Larry?

Speaker 3 30:22

No. Okay. No, but she is married to Megan Rapino, which is a soccer fame.

Speaker 7 30:27

Yeah.

Speaker 3 30:27

Um, so Sue Bird is a great basketball player, played for the Seattle Storm. She's in the huddle, and the coaches are just going on and on about all the mistakes they're playing that they're they're having. This is the finals. They're like, could potentially win the entire, you know, thing. And and they're just like, man, we gotta get our stuff together. What are we doing wrong? And she said, hey guys, the other team, they're playing basketball too. Wow.

Speaker 2 30:55

Yeah, that's so simple but so profound. Right? Yeah. Like the other team, they're trying to do exactly what you're trying to do.

Speaker 3 31:02

And that should, I think, create a level of respect. When you kick someone, when you push someone, when there's like a moment of like discord on the field, it's because it's an ego-driven moment. Yeah. It's because that person is feeling somehow slighted or 100%.

Speaker 7 31:19

I see that a lot. I mean, I I see the other team doing that more, but you know, that's probably just what I'm more attuned to. Yeah. Is the retaliatory nature of certain things that happen on the field.

Speaker 3 31:31

And it makes perfect sense because that's literally what's happening in public discourse all the time right now. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's a leveraged, paid interaction that is being forced in the social medias. Like there are people who are buying the right to show you, your kids, or whoever, these versions of us that are the worst versions of us.

Speaker 7 31:59

Right. Yeah. It's it's concerning.

Speaker 3 32:02

Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, the human brain works that way as well. Again, this is evolutionary brain. Evolutionary brain wants to react to incendiary uh visuals and rhetoric. So the more rage bait that there is, it's also quite good for countries that want to see our country destabilized, right? It's it's like textbook propaganda infiltration. Like you you couldn't the KGB wrote this, and and the the Nazis wrote this many years ago. Exactly what's happening right now. We have these propaganda delivery machines in our hands. All the time. And everyone has one. And everyone has one. And it's like overwhelming. Yeah, it is overwhelming. That the vitriol that you see there is spilling into public discourse all the time.

Speaker 7 32:53

Okay. So back to freestyle love supreme. Where did we go? How well how do you think that freestyle love supreme is working against that? Like how, how do you, how are you? Because I feel like you are. I mean, you have not said such in so many words, but I feel like you're trying to contribute something that isn't what we were just talking about.

Speaker 3 33:17

100%. And so even coaching my daughter's soccer team for a long time. Yeah. It was about respecting the opponent and all that kind of stuff. But I think, you know, the word there that's in the middle, that's the heart of it, is love. So freestyle love supreme first pays homage to John Coltrane. Right? A love supreme is one of those channeled moments. And there's a church of John Coltrane here in San Francisco. I don't know if you've ever been.

Speaker 7 33:42

I've never been. Have you been?

Speaker 3 33:44

Yeah, absolutely. And and it's incredible. And you know, it gets to a little bit, I think, of this divine acting through us. Yeah. Um, and I think the divine is always acting through us. I mean, we are literally made of stardust, right?

Speaker 7 33:57

So every We are pieces of the master. We are pieces of the master. We're a masterpiece.

Speaker 3 34:03

Oh. I love it. Yes, that. And so creating a bit of a mirror and a window into that is what Freestyle Love Supreme is. So for those of you who are familiar with the show and those that aren't, we get words from the audience throughout the entire show. We start off the show with one word, a verb, and then that's what we do our mic check with. So we check the mics and we say, okay, this is the verb to do the checking.

Speaker 7 34:29

Can we do a little improv here? Of course. Of course. Okay, so I'm the audience and I'm gonna throw out a word. Great. I'm gonna throw out the word cake.

Speaker 3 34:37

Cake. Okay, great. But I'm gonna ask for a verb.

Speaker 7 34:39

Oh, sorry. That's okay.

Speaker 3 34:41

Just to mirror kind of what the thing in freestyle of Supreme would be. Okay. So a verb is like run, jump, gesticulate. These are all verbs. So go ahead. Give me a verb. And let's do a couple. Get a couple of verbs.

Speaker 7 34:52

Cycling, baking.

Speaker 3 34:54

Baking. Um running. Running. This is very gerund-oriented. You like the past tense of all these things. You let you add the ing to all your verb. Interesting. I had cycle, bake, run, um, create. Create. Okay, awesome. Great. So cycle, bake, run, create. Okay. Cool. So then the show might start with uh uh this is microphone one. This is microphone one. Okay, yes, I will run. The microphone check because I'm on mic one. Now, how do we do it? How do we get less fickle? Well, maybe we could do it in a pickle with my sickle or my cycle. I bite sickle two. Now, as I run down, I will run all through. My processes to make sure I am innate in doing this thing that I create. Because when I bring myself to the forefront, I will just do it like a shake and bake forefront. Storefront. I missed up the word. That's alright, because if you mess up, you can just make a new masterpiece out of those things you did. Not intend. So let me pretend that I will begin, begin again.

Speaker 7 36:08

Wow. That's impressive. I'm really glad we got to that. I sort of had in the back of my mind, like, maybe Anthony will show us a little bit of what he does. Yeah, 100%. Right? I mean, it's play.

Speaker 3 36:22

It's so playful. And I'm gonna ask you to play in a little bit too. Oh boy, I'm scared. Exactly.

Speaker 7 36:27

Yeah.

Speaker 3 36:28

Because play does that to us. Uh-huh. Yeah. There's two things probably just happened. One, oh, what if I mess up? Mm-hmm. Two, I'm gonna lose face in front of another human being. Because no human wants to be ostracized or seen as different or wrong or not fitting in.

Speaker 7 36:47

Exactly. And then rejected from the tribe.

Speaker 3 36:49

Boom. If that happens, you starve, right? For millennia, that was the case. So our brains of evolutionary sort of built towards that. But play for me is the antidote. So that's what I'm trying to bring to the world. Because if people get to play and see it as low-risk exposure therapy, then we can probably handle uncertainty a bit better. We can handle all of this vitriol and say, maybe I'm not seeing both sides of this. What if I played both sides out? What if I tried it on? And I think that concept of trying things out, like I've been in 600 marriages, I've had 29 divorces, I've started 652 companies. Like in all the shows I've ever done, I have tried to earnestly play all of those things and put myself in the position of like learning from them. And so I've lived a lot of lives on stage and otherwise, even just in like rehearsal rooms. And I've like created a healthy hypothalamus regulation in my brain around the possibility of not knowing.

Speaker 7 37:59

Right. So you've strengthened that neural pathway by doing it over and over and over again.

Speaker 3 38:06

Correct. Yeah. Correct. Not triggering my amygdala. I don't know. Somebody's asking me to try something, they're asking me to play. Great. I mean, that's therapeutic. I believe so. A hundred percent. And I think that's the the gospel of improv is that. It's is exactly that thing.

Speaker 7 38:24

Mm-hmm. Which is, I think you might have touched on, but the other question that I had from earlier was how successful do you feel like and successful is in quotes, but successful do you feel like you are in living with uncertainty from moment to moment? Because it sounds like that's what you're doing on stage. You're living with uncertainty because you don't know what the audience is going to throw out. I mean, you have enough experience now where you have some idea, but you don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 3 38:58

And so I'd rather not have an idea.

Speaker 7 39:01

Because it it allows you more creativity. It allows me to hear it for the first time. Beginner's mind.

Speaker 3 39:08

100%. Improv also is like one of the best tools to sharpen that blink.

Speaker 7 39:13

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 39:14

And so But in my actual like day-to-day life, like relationship-wise, I mean, it's a nightmare to think everything has to be left to the moment, right? I think that's hard for most humans. I know that there's a difference between being on stage and being in my day-to-day around what I need to show up and make feel a bit more certain. My kids need to know I will take them to school. Right. My kids need to know I will be there in the morning. My partner needs to know, I will bring in this amount of money roughly this year. So we can make certain plans. So we can go on a trip together. With that said, there's also a dance between how much is uh what I consider to be like useful and healthy for me, and how much is the other person's anxiety. And is it good for me to help them with their anxiety by then shifting more towards their needs? And is it better for me to hold staunch to my beliefs? I mean, that is that's marriage in a nutshell. Right.

Speaker 7 40:27

That's a dance that you're doing all the time, every day.

Speaker 3 40:30

All the time. And I will say that we're at a particularly inflex moment around an inflection moment around the dynamics between men and women. And I have a lot of women in my household.

Speaker 7 40:43

That was not lost on me that you have two daughters and and what's your cat?

Speaker 40:48

He is a boy.

Speaker 7 40:49

Okay, so you do have a pet who's a boy.

Speaker 3 40:53

A pet who's a boy. Um so yeah, so so a lot of women in the house, and I firmly believe that as a man alive in this country right now, the the thing that we can do to make the country better is to literally support women more.

Speaker 7 41:11

Mike Drop.

Speaker 3 41:12

Yeah, full stop.

Speaker 7 41:13

Absolutely. I 100% agree. Not just because I'm a woman, but just if you look historically at matriarchal societies, they were not in the kind of mess that we're in.

Speaker 3 41:24

Absolutely. Authoritarian uh male leadership tends to be destructive. Uh and you know, I I think obviously there's a lot of evolutionary brain stuff going on here as well. I don't need to get into it. Uh what I think is more important is that when my wife has a need and I have a need that are vying for each other, I typically will flange towards her need overpowering mine. Especially when it comes to communication, calendaring, and finances. Those are the things that were really difficult for her growing up. And I know that about her. And I know enough to say these are hills that she doesn't need to die on.

Speaker 7 42:13

And have you always been like that, or is that something that has come about more in the current political social climate that we're living in?

Speaker 3 42:26

That's a good question. You know, I think I had a pretty profound experience uh with my mom. So yeah, so uh my mom was sexually abused by her father and she suppressed it until he was on his deathbed. And it all came flooding back to her during that period of her taking care of her dying father. Wow. And knowing that he was the abuser of her sexually during her childhood.

Speaker 7 43:00

And how did you find out about it at that point?

Speaker 3 43:04

It was about three or four years later that I found out about it. I was about 17, 18 when I found out about it. And it was tectonic. You know? Because my mom is one of those humans that you're like, oh wow, she's the best of us. Kind, hardworking, generous, always loving, always there, volunteering, going the extra mile, working nine like all these crazy jobs to make ends meet for our family, cleaning houses, you name it. Like that's my mom.

Speaker 43:36

And to imagine that, you know, she suffered in that way. Wow. I just it affected me in such that I think the universe said he needs two daughters.

Speaker 8 43:53

Wow. That's powerful. So yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 44:01

So I think I've been very pro-women I mean even before that, but that really solid that's sort of like a a tectonic plate shift towards that.

Speaker 7 44:14

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. I feel like that's obviously a very um emotional and heartfelt experience for you. And um, I'm sure you this is not the first time you've talked about it, but you know, it still brings up a lot of emotion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, I'm sure that it helps you in your marriage, and I'm sure that it helps you with your daughters, and I hope so. I feel like we need more men who are willing to defer in that way because what you said is that you I I I don't think you use the word defer, but that you will let her needs it's kind of like come before yours.

Speaker 3 45:06

Yeah. I I mean, I have to say, I think that you know, and knowing which ones those are, right? So it's not everything. Right. Um, but having some some categories that you're like, oh, right, this is this is just a non-negotiable for her. Like this is something that I need to flange. I kind of need to have a decision gate that filts filters towards her perspective 100%. Um, but then also knowing, like, okay, which ones I need to tend to myself, which ones refill my energy pool. Right. That's important as well. Because no one's a saint, right? No one, I don't have infinite patience for like, uh, you you did it again, right?

Speaker 7 45:47

Well, and you have your own needs and things that you know are probably more important than they are necessarily for her. And so hopefully you're doing a dance together where you're both doing that.

Speaker 3 45:58

A hundred percent, right? It's it's what are the gives, what are the takes, what are the takes, what are the gives. You know, that's relationship-wise, that's that's sort of like my take and perspective on women. Um, it's not like this is also true in the bedroom. Like, if a woman's pleasure is sort of front and center in what the experience is, it's 9,000 times better outcomes for the world, for the planet. Like, not literally just my partner. Right. For everyone.

Speaker 7 46:30

But I would imagine, or maybe this is more of a question, that you did not feel that way when you first started having intimate experiences with women. That comes with age, right?

Speaker 3 46:41

It absolutely comes with age. You know, unfortunately, pleasure principle is not something that's taught, right? And it's something that needs to be learned. So, where do you learn it from? Um, you know, my partner and I did go about trying to rewrite some um sexual education material for San Francisco Unified School District. So we created this thing called Bloom Science, and we got some grants from Power to Decide and Planned Parenthood, because literally sexual education in the state of California is still under the same mandate as it was passed in 1986, which is the only kids by ninth grade only need to learn one thing about sex, and that's that you can spread the disease of AIDS from intercourse. That's it. That's the only thing that is mandated by the state of California, and this is a progressive state we're talking about. This isn't Alabama or Mississippi, which says you can't talk about the body at all.

Speaker 8 47:34

Right.

Speaker 3 47:35

Reproductive organs can't even be mentioned in those states. That's California. I was just like, that's still what it is? They would literally roll out a television with a VCR player and put in a tape called 321 Contact, which was made in 1988, and that's what was teaching our children at Up until when? Still. Like until 2021.

Speaker 7 48:01

Because I feel like my kids got a my kids did go to San Francisco Public Schools for elementary school. Yeah. And I feel like in fifth grade they had someone coming in and talking to them about sex.

Speaker 3 48:15

Having outside contractors come in, yes. Some up to the school district. Absolutely. Up to the school district or up to the individual school. Up to the school district. Okay. And then the individual school is ultimately the contracting negotiator. Side is going to come in. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, the state of California, it's still the same law and rule. And then each school district has that purview, right? And yeah, we were one of the contractors that started coming in. That's very cool. So you and your wife were teaching the curriculum? Yeah, I mean, more importantly, we taught trainers and facilitators to and then we have three volumes of books, starting with kindergartners. Because you can teach the concept of this feels good, that doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and that is that's all the pleasure principle really is is saying to somebody, this feels good, this doesn't. So that can start at a very young age. You can use sandpaper and be like, Does that feel good against your skin? No. Okay, great. Let your partner know. Yeah. So, you know, those simple principles around trust and understanding and good secrets and bad secrets, like that's all stuff that you can cover in kindergarten and first grade. And then second and third grade, you can talk about relationships and what it means to trust each other, yeah, like with information. Right. And then in fourth and fifth grade, you can like actually start talking about the social implications of what it means to have a baby and why are these things being seen on small screens and computers? Like, why what is pornography? Why is it out there? Are you teaching that in fourth and fifth grade? Or are you? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. By the age 12, 74% of kids have been exposed to pornography online.

Speaker 7 50:02

Boys and girls?

Speaker 3 50:03

Boys and girls.

Speaker 7 50:05

That is a disturbing statistic. It's crazy.

Speaker 3 50:09

It's crazy. I mean, the m Carecia, my partner, made this great analogy, which is you know, uh imagine learning to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto. That's what sex education is for these kids. Yeah, that's terrifying. They're watching Grand Theft Auto version porn, and they're imagining that's what pleasure is supposed to look and feel like. Wow. Yeah. That's terrible.

Speaker 7 50:34

And then you wonder how we ended up where we are today.

Speaker 3 50:38

Yeah. The manosphere. Or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 7 50:43

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean, without getting too far afield, it's deep because even men who think that they are feminist or like honoring of women, they don't really know because they weren't taught. You know what I mean? So they're learning things now, but it's so programmed into them from such a young age that I think it's a really hard unlearning, even with the best of intentions.

Speaker 3 51:20

Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 7 51:22

So yeah, anyway, I pulled us into the Yeah, we went a whole different direction. Okay, so I wanted to circle back to something that you said in the beginning, and I again do not remember verbatim, but you said something about how we've got it all wrong, in the sense that we it was about certainty, but it was also something about um the part of our brain that wants to predict everything and know, and that actually, and these are my words, but that sort of what makes us thrive and come alive is the opposite of that. And I find that extremely challenging, personally, you know, just to go into a situation and not be quote unquote prepared, or to look like a fool, or to look like I don't know, or but I do think there's magic in it. And so I just wanted to circle back around to that and just get your thoughts and you know, specifically if you were thinking of something, or just generally how you apply that and where you see the magic in that.

Speaker 3 52:40

Ooh, this is a good one, but I I think I want to like take a slightly different approach. Okay. And I'm gonna ask you to do something scary.

Speaker 8 52:48

Okay.

Speaker 3 52:48

And that's to play a game with me.

Speaker 8 52:50

Okay.

Speaker 3 52:51

Um, and do a little bit of improv.

Speaker 8 52:53

Okay.

Speaker 3 52:53

Together. I and I I referred to it earlier and I was like, oh wow, we never got to play a game. Um, we're gonna play a game and it's called convergence. Okay. And it's impossible.

Speaker 8 53:03

Okay.

Speaker 3 53:04

Because I'm gonna ask you to do something that that a lot of people think is not possible.

Speaker 7 53:08

Okay.

Speaker 3 53:09

We're gonna try to read each other's minds.

Speaker 7 53:10

Ooh, I love it. Okay. Love it. Love this game already.

Speaker 3 53:14

And the way it works is we'll create parameters to try to help us to get to that. Okay. So um here's how it starts. One person thinks of a word in their mind's eye, and when they have that word, they say the number one. Okay. And then the other person says, Oh, okay, gosh, they have their word. What let me try to read their mind. And then when they think they know the other person's word, they say the number two.

Speaker 8 53:38

Okay.

Speaker 3 53:38

And then together we count out loud one, two, three, and then we say our word. Okay. Now for the first round, it might be something like, I thought of the word pineapple, and you thought of thought of the word bird, right? And so we would have said bird pineapple. Oh, okay. We didn't say the same word at the same time. But we have now words to help create a bit of a journey for us. So now we have the word banana, or what do I say? Pineapple. Pineapple. Pineapple and bird. What is the sort of connecting word between those? What's like the middle ground between pineapple and bird? And when you think you know that word, you say the number one. And then I have to be like, oh, okay, if you said one, oh gosh, what does Maya think is between pineapple and bird?

Speaker 7 54:16

I feel like my kids have we've played a game very similar to this. It's not exactly this, but this is how eat having a very familiar feeling.

Speaker 3 54:26

Great. I I've played this with thousands of people. Okay, so it's probably extended to my children, and yeah. I played it at schools, my kids play it. Okay. Awesome. So the other part is that any word that came before is dead to us. So we can't say pineapple or bird again.

Speaker 8 54:42

Okay.

unknown 54:42

Okay.

Speaker 3 54:43

But now we're starting from scratch.

Speaker 8 54:44

Okay.

Speaker 3 54:44

We're gonna get this wrong a bunch. Okay. But our goal is to try to say the same word at the same time. That's not true. We are hopefully gonna say the same word at the same time. The goal is to play. Okay. Does that make sense? I love it. Yeah. Difference. I like the goal being to play. Yeah. Um, okay, and then start whenever anyone gets a word in their mind's eye.

Speaker 7 55:02

Oh, okay. So there's not a designated starter, just whoever has a word in their mind. Okay, I have one.

Speaker 3 55:08

Great.

Speaker 7 55:10

Two. Okay.

Speaker 3 55:12

One, two, three, French fryer. Oh, I don't like it. French fry inspire.

Speaker 7 55:19

Okay. French fry inspire.

Speaker 3 55:24

Okay. One. Two. Great. Okay, here we go.

Speaker 7 55:29

One, two, three, Belgian.

Speaker 1 55:34

Belgium?

Speaker 7 55:35

Fritter.

unknown 55:37

Okay.

Speaker 1 55:38

What's in between those? And is not French fry, it is not Belgium, it is not Fritter, is not inspired. Okay. So what's between those two words? One.

Speaker 55:51

Two. Okay, here we go. One, two, three, deep.

unknown 55:58

Deep waffle. Okay. What's between deep and waffle?

Speaker 7 56:04

Okay. One, two, three. Chocolate covered.

unknown 56:09

Oh, that's good.

Speaker 7 56:11

One, two, three. Donuts. One, two, three. Decadence. One, two, three. Indulgent. One, two, three. Satiated. Healing. Oxymoron. Victory. Victator.

Speaker 1 56:37

You just made it up new. I love it.

Speaker 3 56:41

Victator and Conqueror. Conqueror. Victory. Latin. Lover. Okay, let's put a pin in it.

Speaker 7 56:48

Okay.

Speaker 3 56:49

Great.

Speaker 7 56:50

So we just played. Yeah, we played.

Speaker 3 56:52

What was it like for you?

Speaker 7 56:53

Uh, it was actually really fun. I was really scared that you were gonna play a game that was that game was actually like really fun for me. Yeah. I think a game where you were challenging like my intelligence or how much I know, or like something like that would have been way harder for me.

Speaker 3 57:10

Yeah. But this felt very playful and very even in this game, I sensed that from you.

Speaker 7 57:18

What do you mean?

Speaker 3 57:19

Proving yourself.

Speaker 7 57:21

Oh, that I was trying to prove myself.

Speaker 3 57:23

Just that there's an unspoken tremolo of your note around proving.

Speaker 5 57:31

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 57:32

For whatever reason.

Speaker 7 57:34

Yeah. Well, I definitely have some um, just to get vulnerable myself, like I have some insecurity around my intelligence, and particularly, it's not really my intelligence in a vast sense, but my intelligence like academically, or like for things that are very like heady and learned and things like that.

Speaker 3 58:01

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, for me, games are just pattern recognition tools. And because I've played these games a lot when I play with someone, they're a bit of like a pattern recognition tool for me. Like people obviously can see us playing this, but we're in the room together and you were closing your eyes for most of it.

Speaker 8 58:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3 58:20

So there was a bit of how do I tap into something? Yes, for sure. But then also like judging the process as well was interesting. Yeah. Is this word good enough? Or there was some interesting thing in there.

Speaker 7 58:35

Yeah. I think when we started to go faster, yeah, that lessened because I didn't have as much time to judge and think about whether my word was okay. Or and yes, the closing the eyes, like that is how I tune in. You know, is like I don't I try not to have anything within my vision.

Speaker 3 58:54

Right.

Speaker 7 58:55

So yeah, but that's cool that you picked up on that because there's I'm sure that um there's that fear of saying the wrong word or not doing it right, or you know.

Speaker 3 59:06

Yeah, I think that that voice is the predominant voice in most people's heads. And it's so sad. It's very sad. It's very sad because I think that then is is a major hurdle towards flow state. Totally. In judgment of consistently what I know from the research that we've done is they can't be at the same volume. So if you're in judgment, it quiets your flow state. And if you're in flow state, it quiets your judgment.

Speaker 7 59:35

I think that I have heard that before. I think that either Elizabeth Gilbert or Rick Rubin or one of those people that like I've been kind of reading a lot about their ideas around creativity.

Speaker 4 59:48

Yeah.

Speaker 7 59:49

Oh, you know what I think it was? I think it was Martha Beck, and she said that anxiety and creativity cannot coexist. So very similar.

Speaker 3 1:00:00

Very similar, very similar. And there's another study around fear and empathy.

Speaker 7 1:00:04

Those two cannot coexist at the same volume as well. At the same volume, I like that caveat. So they can coexist.

Speaker 2 1:00:13

Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:00:14

It's not like you can't have empathy in the face of fe or in combination with fear, but your empathy won't be as honed in or sharp or strong.

Speaker 3 1:00:26

I think that's it, right? I always think of it as like a crossfader, like on like a DJ, you know, like going from one song to another song. Um, sometimes it's super soft, and then other times it's the loud, predominant song. But yeah, I mean, I think most people sit in in judgment of themselves 90% of the day.

Speaker 7 1:00:45

Yeah. When I was young and single, but living in San Francisco, I did uh Bay Area Theater Sports, Bats.

Speaker 2 1:00:54

Let's go. I know bats very well. Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:00:57

And you know, just as a way to kind of get out there and meet people. Yeah. And um, I found it so challenging.

Speaker 3 1:01:04

Super challenging. Yeah, yeah. It is, it's really hard. I think the comforting thing I think for most people around like getting to play games like that is their rules and then guidance, right? So when we were doing it, I was like, okay, you're getting a bit isolated and you're kind of closing down. And for me, it's here, right? It's between us. It's in the field. Yeah. Between us. And so I was like, okay, great, let's try with your eyes open, and then let's go a little bit faster. And the faster is to get out of the judgment state. Get out of the judgment state.

Speaker 7 1:01:35

Yeah. Beautiful. I love it. And I also wanted to say when you were talking about this in the beginning, my son and I play a game. He won't play with me anymore because now he's 16. When um he was younger, we would in the car when we were on long road trips, we would play a game, guess the number I'm thinking, in my head. And it was between like one and a hundred. Yeah. And I feel very much in sync with him, you know, like we we definitely mind meld.

Speaker 6 1:02:02

Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:02:03

And um, you know, then say my number was 50 and he guessed 49, then I would say over, you know, so then he'd have a little bit more of a gauge of what it was. But yeah, it's the same thing. It's like reading someone's mind.

Speaker 3 1:02:15

Yeah. Sort of getting on the same page. No, totally. And and I love that game because it it allows you to get a glimpse to how the other person's thought processing typically goes. Because it's a problem, right? What's the middle word between those two things? Right. At one point, you just combined them and made up a new word, which is awesome, right? Like how creative and inventive. And if we were to play again in the future, I might look for that wildcard moment from you when you kind of like giggle to yourself and you go one, right? So now I'm looking for tells from you as to how you're about to play, if I'm really dialing in, trying to get on the same page with you.

Speaker 7 1:02:55

That's cool. I like it. Yeah. Thanks. That was fun. That was fun. I got to play a game today. Okay, so um, just to pivot a little bit back to where you've been wandering afield. We definitely went in directions that I had not attended, but I love that. That feels very improvisational.

Speaker 1:03:15

Nicely done.

Speaker 7 1:03:16

And very creative. Um, but and one thing that I wanted to ask you about was this idea of so back to the idea of where ideas come from. And um I have read the book Big Magic. Have you read that by Elizabeth Gilbert?

Speaker 2 1:03:36

I haven't.

Speaker 7 1:03:37

Oh, you should. Okay. You would like it.

Speaker 2 1:03:38

Okay.

Speaker 7 1:03:38

You would like it. Um, so one of the things that she talks about, she has a fascinating story about meeting Anne Patchett and how I I won't be able to do the story justice, but I will try to give a reduced version of it. So basically, um, Elizabeth Gilbert is writing a novel about something that happens in Brazil. And that's all the information I'll give because I don't really know the details. But then she meets Anne Patchett just randomly. And I think maybe they've never met before, but they've had communication. They've been in communication about writing. And in a very uncharacteristic way, when they meet, Anne Patchett kisses Elizabeth Gilbert. Not in a, I don't think, romantic or sexual way, but just like a very effusive way. And they talk about what they're creating and they part ways. And then they come back together to discuss what they've been creating. And Ann Pachet says to Elizabeth Gilbert, like, no, I think Elizabeth Gilbert says, tell me what you've been working on. And Ann Patch says, No, you tell me first. And Elizabeth Gilbert starts telling her about the novel that she's writing about this woman in Brazil who travels maybe with her boss and she's in love with her boss. And, you know, she gives her all the details, and then she looks at Anne Patchett, and Ann Patch says, You've got to be fucking kidding me. She wrote the exact same novel. And they, the reason that I said the part about the kiss is that it was because Elizabeth Gilbert decides not to write this novel, and Anne Patchett goes on to write it, and they kind of joke in quotes that it was passed through the KISS.

Speaker 6 1:05:34

Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:05:35

And then Ann Patrick gets the idea and she writes it. And so that is about this idea. And in fact, when I um interviewed Nico, he told me that in the skateboarding community, I don't know if you know that he was a skateboarder, he still is a skateboarder. Yeah, yeah. And he worked for Thrasher magazine. Awesome. And that the founder of Thrasher had a word for that, which is this idea that. The ideas are out there. And if you don't catch it, somebody else is going to catch it. And so in skateboarding, there was a name for it because some skateboarder in like New York would say that he started this skateboarding technique or, you know, jump, whatever it is, you know? And then the guy in Kansas has the idea at the exact same time. And so the idea that these ideas are floating out there. Yeah. And it is our job as artists slash creative people to catch them or somebody else will. And so that idea to me is so fascinating because I think it gets, I think what is so interesting to me, or one of the things that's so interesting to me about all of this is the kind of mystical quality to it. Like I'm just kind of obsessed with things that you can't really explain with the human 3D mind field. Yeah. Not mind, not mind field, but mind and field. Yes. So I guess my question for you is where do you think your idea? I mean, I know some of it you're getting from your audience, specifically in Freestyle Love Supreme. Yeah. But you said something earlier about when you and Lynn were working together and you said something like, this needs to come alive or go on stage. This needs to be in front of other people. And so, like that, I don't know if that specifically, but where do you think your ideas come from? And how do you think that those ideas get communicated with you and the other members of Freestyle Love Supreme such that? So another example that I think is super cool is that Rick Rubin talks about this: that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I think a lot of bands do this, but because they've been playing together for so long, they will come on stage without communicating overtly with each other. And not only will they play the same song, but they'll start a melody that they've never played before and they're all playing it. So that stuff just is like so trippy and so cool to me because we are communicating nonverbally with each other all the time. I don't think anyone would question that.

Speaker 6 1:08:27

Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:08:28

But our ideas are also being um exchanged with each other unbeknownst to our conscious minds.

Speaker 3 1:08:37

100%. Yeah. I think of it a lot like trees. So uh mycelium networks which exist underground, like the largest living organisms are forests because they travel thousands of miles underground. The mycelium helps communicate, obviously unspokenly, where the shade is, where the sun is, if there is a potential threat, is is there gonna be a drought? It's this mesh networking between all of these things that we are incalculably a part of. That mesh networking, it it's a bit of syncopation, pheromones, and availability. Do you avail yourself to the moment?

Speaker 8 1:09:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:09:32

And do you lean into the belief of that avail?

Speaker 8 1:09:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:09:37

It's huge. Right. It's huge. Having a group of, and this is so at Freestyle of Supreme, what we say to each other before we go on stage is I've got your back. And we give each other a hug. Having that sense of I'm gonna go out here, and no matter what I do, someone will pick it up.

Speaker 5 1:09:55

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 1:09:57

Tiny trust. Absolute trust. Yeah. 100% trust. What it says is no matter what you do, it's going to be great. If you make a mistake, it's a part of the pattern. And it won't be seen as a mistake. If anything, it shows the audience how hard this thing that we are doing is. Right.

Speaker 7 1:10:18

And that there really are no mistakes.

Speaker 3 1:10:20

There really aren't. You know, one of my favorite quotes of all time, as well in the music world, I've got a lot of quotes that I love. Uh so sports world, Subert, Music World is Miles Davis. And he said, it's not whether you play a wrong note, it's the next note that you play. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I think that's just such a great sentiment about life as well. You know, I think we often think of these things as failures or success. And the truth is, it's just all learning. So for me, those magical moments, for me, where do they come from? Where do I get things? It's almost always in investing in others. It's always that for me. It's always serving and investing in others. I just I get so much from it. Sometimes to my detriment. But what does that mean? Detrimental how? Like my physical being? Never. Yeah. My mental being? Maybe. Emotional. Maybe emotionally. Maybe I emotionally am more drained than I should be with over-invest over-indexing. But I would so much rather live my life that way than withholding. When you said the idea was had at the same moment, and if you don't grab it, someone else will. My my immediate thought was great.

Speaker 7 1:11:44

Let them.

Speaker 3 1:11:45

Absolutely. As long as the idea that needs to see the light makes it to the light. It's it's I'm very pro-social.

Speaker 7 1:11:56

A hundred percent as opposed to the vessel through which the idea comes.

Speaker 3 1:11:59

A thousand percent. Yeah. I'm very pro-social that way. I very much believe that the good of all is much more important than the good of one. And unfortunately, we currently live in a country still dictated by the myth of the rugged exceptional individual over nature.

Speaker 8 1:12:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:12:21

So scorched earth is is something that we're handing down to our children. And I hope that that story gets altered soon enough.

Speaker 8 1:12:32

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:12:32

You know. But yeah, always other people. Um, so I I do a an a podcast as well. It's called Um American Immigrants Pursuit of Happiness. We interview people about their family's story to coming to this country, and then we create a song based out of that story. And then we play the song for them and their family and get their reactions.

Speaker 7 1:12:54

What's your podcast called?

Speaker 3 1:12:55

Pursuit of Happiness.

Speaker 7 1:12:56

Oh, cool.

Speaker 3 1:12:57

Yeah. So you know, we're midway through making the first season. We've got four episodes recorded, and we're recording recording four more. And the hope is like we have an album by the end, and these are immigrant anthems that are safe spaces for immigrants to experience these stories that are universal. Um, but those that comes from them. Like those stories, like my job is to get it right in that circumstance. And I typically don't say that phrase, like, I gotta get this right. But when someone shares a story with me, it is an enormous gift that they are giving me. And I want to give them as enormous of a gift back.

Speaker 8 1:13:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:13:36

To say I think the most important feeling a human can have is that they are seen, they are heard, and they are felt. And if I can help them with that, if I can do that in that moment with that song, yeah, I'm living I think with the intention of my tuning fork.

Speaker 7 1:13:58

I mean, I think that's what a good therapy is, you know, is all of those qualities and having the person feel that that's healing. Incredibly so.

Speaker 3 1:14:09

Yeah. That's I think we're in the same business in a lot of ways. That is absolutely when I do a live improvised freestyle rap concert, it's to hear the audience. And anything that gets said, even if it's not the chosen word for that particular, it'll find its way into the show. Every voice is important, everything that was uttered, because that that's them making a risk. That's them saying something in front of others, yeah. In which for most of our lives, it's terror. Yeah, right?

Speaker 7 1:14:38

Absolutely raising your hand in school and saying something that you don't know is correct, quote unquote.

Speaker 1:14:45

Yep. Yep.

Speaker 7 1:14:47

Yeah. Wow. Well, I want to um make sure that we include your question. Uh yeah, my question. So the part of this podcast that is about me is where I get to practice my experience of channeling, which is um, you know, you saw how excited I get about the kind of mystical transfer of information between human beings. Yeah. And so I have been studying how to read energy for several years now. And um, so I ask each of my guests to give me a question, and then I sit with that question and see what I get and take it or leave it, you know. This is absolutely your experience, is the correct experience. But the question that you asked me was sometimes I'm out of harmony with one of my favorite people, and I want to get back into harmony, but I wonder about allowing there to be dissonance. I'm thinking specifically about business partners and creative partners. Does that sound about right?

Speaker 1:15:56

Yes.

Speaker 7 1:15:57

Okay. So the answer that I got to that question is complex, and I won't go into all of the details about how I get my messages because I think that's actually I'm this is a learning process for me. So I'm doing it different every time. I'm I'm giving the information different every time. This time I'm not gonna talk so much about the messages, but sort of how I put them all together. So I got the sense that in that disharmony, it's extremely uncomfortable for you, and that you are loyal to a fault. And this is before we had this podcast, which now I feel I have confirmed. But I got the sense that you are very loyal, and also that there's something, and you know, I could be off about this, but something about being forgotten, like some concern or worry or fear about being forgotten. So, in the disharmony and the discord, you are very eager to make reparations and bridge that gap as soon as possible because it's so deeply uncomfortable for you to sit, as it is for a lot of people. I mean, I don't think you're unique in that way that it's uncomfortable to sit with disharmony between you and someone you love. But the the discomfort for you is almost like a desperation to reconnect, but in the discord and disharmony, there is an alchemy that happens that it's like through you having faith and trust in the relationship that there is an alchemical process that strengthens the frequency. So you had asked about frequency and whether frequency can sort of transcend time and space. Um, and so the frequency of the connection actually needs that alchemy in order to continue so that it's it's actually really necessary for you to not rush in and collapse the space and make reparations out of a place of fear and desperation because it's not just that the connection is strengthened, but the frequency continues in a pattern that is more expansive. It's like it goes beyond what the frequency had been. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of what I got.

Speaker 3 1:18:52

Oh, I like it. That's great. There's a lot there. Yeah, there's a lot of fear of being forgotten. That's a really good one. That's a really good one to sort of say, oh, right, that does escalate my sense of desperation. Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:19:11

Yeah, well, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. This was super fun. It was been really fun to get to know you. I kind of feel like I know you, like just in the few conversations, even though you were the first guest that I didn't have a pre-existing relationship with, we had some contact before meeting.

Speaker 3 1:19:28

And um, I felt like I got a sense on others, right? Like and Nico and I, like when he talked to me about freestyling, I was like, oh, wait a second, you know, this is for you know, whatever it is, this the skin that dries that falls off of us that then goes to the ground that then goes to other people. You know, it's we're one thing.

Speaker 7 1:19:53

We're led to believe that we are not totally, that we're separate and we're not. Yeah, yeah. Nico, the freestyling thing was the when I said when I planted the seed in him about my podcast, and I said channel, that was the first thing that came to his mind was the first time that he freestyled, yeah, and that that was just like channeled through him, like he didn't know where it came from.

Speaker 3 1:20:18

Yeah, because you're just not judging it. Right? So much of our day we spend in judgment about is this appropriate, is this the right thing to do? Am I doing the right thing? Uh you know, and that it's just a it's a lot. It whether we know it or not, it's kind of the brain was developed to problem solve, and we just create a lot of problems that don't need to be solved. Um, because our brains are really good at it. It's you know, it's that old I've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That's what your brain is a bit like. And freestyling, I think the reason why it's so high-intensity mesh networking is because it feels as though it is it is just passing through you. And the thing I love most about what's called a cipher is that you are willing to uninhibitedly share you, but also be altered by that which is informing you in the moment.

Speaker 7 1:21:16

Yeah, it's a co-creative process.

Speaker 3 1:21:18

100%.

Speaker 7 1:21:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:21:19

I love that about freestyling.

Speaker 7 1:21:21

I do too. I love that. I love all of the ideas around you co-creating with whether you want to call it the divine or consciousness or uh nature or you know, whatever it is, but that it's a collaboration. It's not just you, the artist. It's like you're collaborating with something greater.

Speaker 3 1:21:47

Yeah. Yeah. It typically falls into two camps for me, which is art out of necessity. Do I need to put food on my table? And art out of process. And art out of necessity can be a bit ego and and individually driven, but art out of process, when I find it to be most successful, typically is in conversation with art just for the sake of making art. Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:22:17

Yeah. All right, Anthony. Thank you, Maya. Thank you. This was a delight. And uh maybe we'll have to do a second round at some point, but this was awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:22:32

Absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 7 1:22:34

All right. I would like to thank my editor and original music maker, Luca Zeisati, my technical support friend Kalisha Gardeen, and everyone who loved, encouraged, and supported me in creating this podcast. And thank you, the listener, for listening.