Improv, Delusion & The Reality We Choose

Mary · 0:01
Reggie, what was your favorite part of today's episode?

Reggie · 0:06
Oh man, that's a tough question. You know, I think my favorite part of today's episode was hearing about Tim's potential of wearing a kilt to his next

Speaker · 0:18
culture.

Mary · 0:19
So, Tim's fashion, basically. We all agree. Thank you. It will. What was your favorite part of this episode?

Reggie · 0:25
I think Dylan's closet advice was great, and something that I will actually use.

Dylan · 0:28
Oh, thank you. I liked how delusional I was, and Tim called me out on it. Incredible.

Tim · 0:34
My favorite part was Dylan too. She, I asked her a question about improv and delusion, and she answered the coolest way possible.

Mary · 0:42
Oh, Dylan's always the coolest way possible. My favorite part was learning that Tim's style is James Bond meets Indiana Jones, and I'm measuring every one of his outfits by half standards.

Tim · 0:56
I revealed too much, I Oh,

Mary · 1:10
wow,

Tim · 1:11
that is a great clacker.

Dylan · 1:12
It is Reggie.

Tim · 1:14
Reggie, when you bought that clacker, I really thought it was a failure, because it was a hangable.. no, it was a hangable piece of,

Reggie · 1:22
you thought I

Tim · 1:22
failed, and then the first clack, and I was like, Reggie knew he's talking about, he just had to buy a clacker.

Reggie · 1:29
I actually tried to get as close to the clacker that Mary gave as an example, so it's really

Speaker · 1:35
Mary is the

Mary · 1:36
brilliant

Tim · 1:39
one. That plaque

Mary · 1:41
is great, $300 for it, or whatever, like an official one would have cost.

Tim · 1:46
Now they have digital ones,

Reggie · 1:47
650 bucks.

Mary · 1:51
I do think that's said

Tim · 1:53
at the news, the early Star Wars movies

Mary · 1:56
started the clock.

Reggie · 2:04
Hey there, welcome to Age. I am your host, Reggie Titwell. This is Dylan Garcia, Tim Squaggs. Hello, Mary Green, and I am very happy to be back. I was on vacation last week, and we had the very lovely Adrian sit in for me.

Mary · 2:20
Yeah, and you haven't listened yet, right?

Tim · 2:23
She was great, but she's no Rich.

Reggie · 2:26
I was concerned that I might not have a seat when I come back. She was okay.

Tim · 2:32
There was a moment where I was like, you know what, maybe Reggie doesn't have to be

Reggie · 2:36
retained every other week, so that's good.

Tim · 2:39
There's no truth in that jest. I was purely joking.

Mary · 2:42
Oh yeah, it was fun, but I think it's a little - it's always a little different introducing a new person into, which is fresh and sort of exciting in some ways, but it's great because she knows all of us. So I can imagine she felt right at home with just this context. Say her, we asked her at the end what her favorite part of the episode was, and I forget she probably phrased it much more eloquently than this. I can't remember, because she was like thinking to say whatever the hell I wanted to say,

Tim · 3:12
not be judged or something. Yeah,

Reggie · 3:14
well, speaking of this, it's a show, as you know, that we don't take ourselves too seriously, we say whatever the hell we want to say, and we just really hope that you guys resonate with the things that we are saying. So, that said, I want to get our topic going for the day. So, let's pick. Why are we pulling it from trash cans? We don't know.

Mary · 3:32
Yeah,

Reggie · 3:32
no,

Tim · 3:33
it's a nice trash can, though.

Mary · 3:34
We debated a lot about what the appropriate trash can was.

Tim · 3:37
Sounds like a nice inch.

Reggie · 3:38
Don't be something weird, or maybe be something.

Speaker · 3:42
Yeah,

Tim · 3:42
it's your day.

Dylan · 3:44
The

Tim · 3:45
topic chooses you.

Mary · 3:46
They're actually, they all say the same thing.

Reggie · 3:48
My heart. Oh, this will be a fun one. All right,

Tim · 3:56
let's see.

Reggie · 3:57
Do you think him

Tim · 4:01
to see it? Damn,

Reggie · 4:05
yes.

Tim · 4:06
And I just brought this up last episode, too. Yeah,

Mary · 4:09
okay.

Reggie · 4:11
All right. What are your first impressions

Speaker · 4:12
from

Mary · 4:13
the back? I thought it said Morphe.

Tim · 4:17
I have no first impression.

Reggie · 4:19
Yes, I was hoping for more.

Tim · 4:23
All life is improv. That's what came to my mind.

Reggie · 4:26
Interesting.

Dylan · 4:27
This is improv.

Reggie · 4:28
This is.. this is exactly..

Tim · 4:30
no, this is age.

Dylan · 4:31
Oh,

Reggie · 4:32
this is age. Don't get it twisted. This is age. Improv is another show.

Mary · 4:37
That's our spin-off series. This

Tim · 4:39
is going to be your show. You're the improv master

Mary · 4:46
on that wall,

Reggie · 4:49
like 90% of them are married.

Mary · 4:52
Well, I thought I like to think I was channeling the group when we were concepting the show. It took us. A while to get to the idea of like what if we just talk about something random every time and keep it really fresh and like improv came up as one of the tools that maybe would help us keep it fresh or like help us develop like a troop mentality we did just like a very superficial sort of like hey welcome to improv like Tina Fey had a great talk and I showed that

Speaker · 5:20
one

Mary · 5:20
but it did end up with, like, I'm not gonna say a million, 100 at least sticky notes on there's like this elephant door in the old office. It was a lot of topics, but I think I did probably write half of them. So, when I think improv, I actually get a little scared because, like, there are people who are good at improv, and I find that very intimidating, and it's like to say, like, you know, improv,

Reggie · 5:53
it

Mary · 5:53
could get, like, kind of out of hand kind of quickly, and I don't have, like, formal training of maybe taking a course or two, and then

Reggie · 5:58
we have a lot of great improv troops here in Asheville, and I've seen a handful of them, and they're so entertaining.

Mary · 6:06
I haven't been to one

Reggie · 6:07
here. Yeah, go. They, so I was on a show called The Hometown Show that our buddy George A. Wad puts on, puts on out at Asheville Pizza, the one on Merriman, and they would basically have a guest on the show, and I was the guest on this particular show, and ask them questions about their upbringing, and like who they are, and it's usually people that are notable, and

Speaker · 6:34
you have to improv

Tim · 6:35
this.

Reggie · 6:35
No,

Tim · 6:36
what's your upbringing?

Reggie · 6:39
I was raised. I came from another planet, and this old couple found me on their farm and raised me.

Tim · 6:47
Yes, and

Reggie · 6:48
yes.

Dylan · 6:49
Okay, Superman.

Reggie · 6:50
Yeah. So, no. Basically, what would happen is they would ask questions, and the improv troops would take turns acting out my answers, which was amazing, and it was the funniest thing. So, you, they do a whole Q and A, and they do it in blocks, so they'd ask like maybe five or seven questions, and then I go off stage, the host, the guest goes off stage, and the improv troops come on, and they just kind of, you know, wing it, taking turns acting out the stuff that I just said, and it was just gold mine. It's brilliant. We highly recommend.

Tim · 7:23
When you said you get scared about it, I feel the same way. You know, really, in high school, in theater, in the always.. I don't know, this is probably the worst place to try out improv. If you're in high school and you're already

Reggie · 7:34
nervous and awful,

Mary · 7:35
everybody's kind of just a little bit mean in high school, not on purpose,

Tim · 7:38
and then they start you on the spot with something random that you have

Reggie · 7:41
to

Tim · 7:41
come up with,

Reggie · 7:41
and if you mess up, somebody's gonna totally manage,

Tim · 7:44
right? And there was always someone really good, and then there was always someone that was like, and I, yeah, the

Mary · 7:51
people who are good at it, they're not. I mean, I'm sure there are people who like studied the form and like are very cerebral about it, but so rarely is it just that somebody's really, really smart.

Mary · 8:00
It's

Mary · 8:01
usually just that they're loose, yeah, they're just like rolling with a control,

Mary · 8:05
yeah,

Mary · 8:06
and they're not trying

Speaker · 8:07
so hard,

Speaker · 8:07
right. We

Mary · 8:08
know nothing of this,

Tim · 8:09
that's what I'm saying. It feels like that was more training for real life than all the other classes I was taking.

Reggie · 8:15
I was just about to say that improv probably does set people up for success in life, because you kind of have to be able to, you know, switch on the dime and roll with whatever has been given to you, and I think improv is probably good training for that.

Dylan · 8:31
Improv is cool, I feel like the 20s is like so improv, though.

Mary · 8:40
Oh, well, that's true, like, you've got no like tools with which to navigate the world, and we're just kind of like throwing life,

Dylan · 8:46
yeah, it's like, Who are you? And I'm like, I really like, I do hone on to that, because it's just like, you could do whatever you want, yeah, you can be whoever you want,

Reggie · 8:58
yeah, this is you experiencing life independently for the first time, I

Dylan · 9:03
also, yeah, no, like that. And then I also feel like once you get out of the 20s, everybody's like, all right, come on, get your shit together. Yeah,

Dylan · 9:14
but yeah, I like improv from what I can tell. It's really fun to sit and watch from a distance. Yeah,

Reggie · 9:21
we used to do a thing, so years ago I had a thing called Asheville Game Night, which became this sort of movement, more, more of an era, for

Dylan · 9:30
not to be confused with a movie night. Either

Mary · 9:33
you've told me about

Reggie · 9:34
movie night, movie club,

Mary · 9:36
and I've told you, you need to bring game night back, and I told you that we should do something here, where we could get enough. I would be

Reggie · 9:42
totally down with that, but the cool thing about movie or game night was that we started doing this sort of spin-off improv night, just to try it out. Yeah, and we had a couple of people that were actually improv actors, so they were, and so they would help do. Guide some of the things that we did, and oh my god, was this.. I have videos, I'll have to share them with you sometime, but it was by far one of the most fun things I've ever done, and I was actually pretty good at it, because I can bullshit

Mary · 10:16
like keep it slow.

Reggie · 10:17
It was.. I loved it. I was like, I could totally do this. When

Tim · 10:21
you put it in a party sense, I get like charade vibes from this. Is it like one step away from charades?

Reggie · 10:29
Bit of a vibe, like Jonathan Ross was really good at it. He's another Asheville friend of ours, but I remember we were doing something together, and we had to pretend we were in this car, and we're like driving, and we're just talking about random stuff that's coming by on the road, and he's like, "Oh, go help, maybe we need to go help this old guy over there. Was bad, I'm like, "fuck that guy, man, we don't.. we're just.. it was just the most real, raw, fun, spontaneous stuff, and oh my god, we should definitely do it. Yeah,

Mary · 10:58
I. one of my favorite, like, life lessons that improv has taught me, and I actually worked at an agency where we started to integrate some of this is the idea of not negating something that somebody has said, which I am like I have a real strong sense of truth and have a real strong sense of justice, so sometimes it's in me to say no, that's not correct, but especially in a creative setting, which we always are, being able to like find the nugget in what somebody else said and like cling to that and build upon it instead of like throwing it away and being like this is garbage, let's do my idea,

Reggie · 11:39
yeah,

Mary · 11:39
has been like revelatory in my

Reggie · 11:42
different kind of freedom, right?

Mary · 11:44
Yeah,

Reggie · 11:44
it's like forcing you to cut ties with who you want to be in that moment, yeah, being able to try something different.

Mary · 11:51
We're like prescribing what it ought to be, and the other thing is it forces you to like cling to your people, you know, like I'm not floating out here by myself.

Reggie · 11:59
Yeah,

Mary · 12:00
you are my tether. You have said this, and so I'm gonna continue.

Reggie · 12:04
I mean, it also is just a really good tool for like team building, like really learning how to work collaboratively with other collaboratively with other people.

Tim · 12:13
What if you're an

Mary · 12:15
introvert? This came up on the episode. Yeah,

Tim · 12:18
you didn't watch the last an

Mary · 12:20
ultra. beautiful family,

Reggie · 12:25
they don't. I didn't want to listen to it in the car. I tried. Yeah,

Mary · 12:29
they probably won't ever

Reggie · 12:32
think

Mary · 12:34
I've made Alex listen to one, and it's like very painful to you. Did this with your friends one time, it's like painful to force somebody with you. anyway,

Reggie · 12:43
all are going to be forced.

Mary · 12:44
Yeah, I don't know what the hell you're doing, but thanks for being a part of this. We discovered a new, well, Jake Springfield reposted on Instagram this word, and I can't even remember what it.. Oh, all I remember is I related to it, and there's ultra.

Speaker · 13:03
Thank

Dylan · 13:04
you. Will,

Tim · 13:04
yes. So it's a.. they don't.. well, the last part of it that I related to is that they're.. they don't identify with groups.

Reggie · 13:11
Oh, you're not an entrepreneur?

Tim · 13:13
Yes, because I've always.. and Adrian Fellow

Reggie · 13:16
is a group every month.

Tim · 13:18
Nobody like

Reggie · 13:20
you're there for you,

Tim · 13:21
no, like I never joined AIGA until you talked me into it, like I don't like go out and join groups, like I

Reggie · 13:26
know you out of your ultra

Tim · 13:28
verse, no, I think that there's something, so and I was wondering, because you were saying how you never negate an idea that comes out, and you've actually gotten onto me for negating ideas, and I am like, I'm like, I'm like, a people call my wife, and I, we have creative abrasion, someone named it creative abrasion, yeah, because we like spark, you know, like, you can't start a fire without the flint and the stone going against each other, you

Reggie · 13:57
guys have that feeling,

Tim · 13:57
and there's like, it's aggressive, I don't know if it's aggressive. If you don't know me, you can feel an aggressiveness in creates in creativity. It's not like a fun loving less crate. It's more like start the fire with the Flintstone, you know.

Mary · 14:11
Tim doesn't do anything that's not raw.

Speaker · 14:13
Yeah, but I've been learning wrestle Like we had some

Tim · 14:30
conversational wrestling, I guess you could say, but there is.. I was thinking, because you've told me improv, this the state is to not negate the, the one who comes with the idea, and I think that that's what makes it flow, that's what makes it entertaining. Yeah, and it continues, forces

Mary · 14:47
you into uncomfortable positions too. You're like, well, yeah, you're like, oh, this doesn't feel good. I don't like the idea of this happening. I was envisioning it going that way, but you have to let go of that reality, and it forces. You to like reckon with whatever they've put in front of you, which I hate.

Tim · 15:05
I kind of love it at the same time, because it's a different type of abrasion, like it's like to go with something that you're not totally comfortable with. I'll

Mary · 15:15
own part of this instead of like being against each other with it. It's like let me wrestle with it in here and let it go smooth for a minute.

Tim · 15:24
Someone recently told me everything you want is downstream, and at first I was, I was kind of against that, because I've been taught

Speaker · 15:32
to

Tim · 15:32
climb upstream,

Speaker · 15:33
get

Tim · 15:33
upstream, get told, and the other day I was out in the woods with this guy's group that I'm in, and they said just go up by yourself and think and process, and my instinct was to go up his stream again.

Reggie · 15:46
Yeah,

Tim · 15:46
but then I felt this like everything you want is downstream, and I just started going downstream, and it was so enjoyable. I was jumping from rock to rock, like there's so much more joy in going downstream.

Reggie · 15:58
Yeah,

Tim · 15:58
and it ended up at this beautiful

Reggie · 15:59
pool, swimming against the current,

Tim · 16:01
you're not climbing against, like we're all taught to climb the ladder, and it's like this weird improv principle is kind of going downstream, go with the flow,

Mary · 16:11
yeah, and

Tim · 16:12
not in a way of like just let anyone do what they want, but in a way that lazy,

Reggie · 16:16
not a lazy river kind of a more of a light,

Tim · 16:18
like navigating

Speaker · 16:19
also

Mary · 16:20
twist, it can be rapids, it can be waterfalls, but like

Reggie · 16:23
challenging,

Mary · 16:24
yeah, but yeah, the practice is in letting the flow happen and not staunching that's

Speaker · 16:29
what's

Tim · 16:30
in the flow, yeah, versus what I had grown up doing, because I grew up with two brothers, very close in age, one a year older and one a year and a half younger, so very

Reggie · 16:39
Irish twangs,

Tim · 16:40
yeah, very close, and so in that pursuit of survival,

Reggie · 16:44
yeah,

Tim · 16:44
I learned to fight back, yeah, get my identity my way,

Reggie · 16:49
that's why you're all,

Tim · 16:49
give my food,

Reggie · 16:50
bullying us around,

Tim · 16:52
don't mean to be, but there's a sense of, of like, if you don't fight, you're not going to get what you want, kind of thing, and but what, a, it's like interesting to learn that you get what you want when you deal with the flow, and then you have more of an opportunity to turn it, because then you're not fighting,

Mary · 17:10
what's the saying, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, yeah, you, you challenged me, and I'm having to reconcile that, so let me challenge you, like it's sort of like a one upping, and you can see people who are really good at it. It's like their eyes sparkle when somebody throws them a curve ball, they're like, "You're on my level, like let's keep going. Yeah, it's like really stimulating. I would imagine that we're good at

Reggie · 17:38
all. This sounds really good, like I think it feels like improv is a really good tool of force out in the world, but is there anything that drives you crazy about it? Like, is there anything? I mean,

Speaker · 17:48
the same thing drives me crazy that I love.

Reggie · 17:51
Yeah,

Tim · 17:52
it takes so long, you know? Like working with people, you like have to go with it, and there's an instinct to say, I know already know what I want, and that's a bad instinct, I think, because then you just push through hints that you're in the wrong direction sometimes, but I think it's like I love hate relationship for me, it drives me crazy at the same time. Who

Reggie · 18:12
are you doing?

Dylan · 18:12
I just don't know enough about it, like

Tim · 18:16
you improv an answer.

Speaker · 18:18
I just did,

Tim · 18:20
don't act like you know everything well about Improv.

Dylan · 18:23
Well, did you know it started in 1731

Mary · 18:27
That sounds like some shit I would have said on the stage on the theater.

Mary · 18:30
I watched that thing back, y'all.

Mary · 18:33
I don't know anything about theater.

Speaker · 18:35
Let me

Mary · 18:36
ever try to say a name of a person or a title

Tim · 18:39
of a book.

Speaker · 18:41
Don't let me try to give you a date in history when something happened.

Reggie · 18:45
Don't listen to anything coming out of my book.

Dylan · 18:48
I'm more of a concept person, that's how I am. Like, there's nothing really like that drives me crazy, because I don't know much. I mean, I get the concept, I like the concept.

Dylan · 18:58
I'm like, we'll

Mary · 19:00
put you in some places, and you'll know what, maybe.

Dylan · 19:04
Yeah,

Dylan · 19:04
give me a couple weeks post this episode, and then I'll have some ideas.

Reggie · 19:07
Yeah, we should start. We should start having some field trips, and we'll send Dylan out. It's like, go over to that table and just tell them you're a budding actress. Who

Tim · 19:15
would have no

Reggie · 19:16
problem telling that films that you're in would be like all over there? Yeah,

Mary · 19:21
really, really good at

Reggie · 19:22
it. They would believe it, because then she has this, like, Hollywood, like,

Dylan · 19:26
you ever seen Ozark?

Reggie · 19:27
Yeah,

Mary · 19:31
I think you actually, if you were to try it. In fact, you were talking about theater. I'm the gateway, apparently, yeah, for Dylan, at least, I think that if you were to go try some improv classes, you would at first feel like flustered and scared, duh, and it would probably be a lot of people who are older than you, but you get along quite well with people of all ages, I think you would have a great time, and I think you would. Discover you have like a core capability for this or aptitude for this, because I do think, and I've watched you do this. It's just, it's just committing to the bit, baby.

Dylan · 20:11
It's just being

Mary · 20:12
like, okay, I'm accepting this as true, and how do we roll with

Reggie · 20:15
it? Jimmy's great at that. Yeah, he would thrive in that kind of environment. There is some kind of.. I keep taking my memos about some kind of actual improv thing that's coming up, maybe we can, but what's

Tim · 20:27
what's the meta level here? Is improv not in?

Dylan · 20:31
Oh, I don't know,

Tim · 20:33
I don't know, is it a young.. is it a youth thing?

Dylan · 20:35
I think it is a youth thing. I just don't think we have, like, I don't think we're calling it improv.

Tim · 20:40
What are we calling it? Do you think

Reggie · 20:41
life?

Dylan · 20:42
Yeah, like life.

Tim · 20:43
Trying to figure out what I'm doing.

Dylan · 20:45
Yeah,

Reggie · 20:45
trying to figure all the shit.

Tim · 20:47
Like, have

Dylan · 20:47
you ever had, like, a friend who's like so bought into this trend, and it's like just not them, but they're like in it. Yeah, like we're we've got all that like experiences. So, like, I feel like I like am embodied by improv. It's just like it's just we're not calling it improv, right?

Tim · 21:03
The like,

Dylan · 21:04
it's like a blind theater class.

Reggie · 21:05
Oh yeah, one of my best friends likes to find that he's really into cold plunging. Goes every Thursday night. Oh yeah, he hates it. He sounds familiar. Yeah, no,

Tim · 21:14
he sounds like a loser.

Dylan · 21:15
Well, he sounds hideous. Well, he's a guy. Is this? totally

Tim · 21:26
naked downstream. There's a different group.

Speaker · 21:30
Oh, not

Reggie · 21:36
the cloak cold plunge group.

Tim · 21:38
Wow, I didn't want a cold plunge, because it was a river, but it was a different group.

Reggie · 21:43
Yeah, you couldn't just get and go.

Tim · 21:46
It's wondering, there's nothing weird happening.

Tim · 21:50
It's just

Mary · 21:50
a beautiful place.

Tim · 21:51
Here's the thing,

Reggie · 21:52
weird is relative, and I've done it, and it's amazing.

Tim · 21:55
I'll give you the logic: when you get out of water, freezing water in the dead of winter, and you have to deal with trunks frozen to you, that

Dylan · 22:04
is

Tim · 22:05
no

Reggie · 22:08
good. Is this no? This is

Tim · 22:11
pass it over to you

Reggie · 22:12
in a second. Question, we bring up in the meetings when somebody's saying something, if somebody's saying something that you're not vibing with, or it feels like they're bullshitting, just just lean over, say,

Tim · 22:26
and I'll say, when I know this is not about cold plunder, but since you bring

Mary · 22:30
it up, not about cold funding, though. The

Tim · 22:34
first seven times I went, I refused to go naked because of all the weirdness, the vibes, and ridicule, and all this stuff, and I also grew up a very prudish Christian, so nudity was a thing where you don't do it or it's evil or whatever it is, so when they told me they were going negative, what doing that, and I held on to my trunks for a long time, and I did, and I did, and I was.. it was a pain. You get out of the water, and you got these wet, freezing.. it's 20 degrees outside. The water is like in the mid 30s, and the trunks are frozen, and you got to put them in

Speaker · 23:12
bags

Tim · 23:13
or something to get them. Yeah,

Mary · 23:14
you're gonna get naked at some point anyway.

Tim · 23:16
And we're not plunging in a sauna, we're cold plunging out in the river, so you got to like hike back out and get into your car, so by like the seventh one I was like, you know, I'm doing this, and I was embarrassed by doing it, because you know, I grew up the way I grew up, but to be in the water with nothing between you and the hell

Mary · 23:32
yeah, it's crazy,

Tim · 23:33
it was, and I'm beyond it now, I'm like, so non-prudish, now

Reggie · 23:37
I was naked my first time,

Tim · 23:39
you were, I was impressed with that. You were just like, whatever. Let's do this. Yeah, I must have

Mary · 23:44
identified with the group. He wasn't like pushing against

Reggie · 23:47
the

Mary · 23:48
tide,

Reggie · 23:48
like, whatever.

Tim · 23:51
Yeah, well, I was

Reggie · 23:52
born naked. So,

Tim · 23:53
well, in high school they make fun of you in locker rooms, dude. When you get naked, so then go to

Reggie · 23:59
the bathroom without people that you couldn't do number twos at the school, man. Kids laugh at you for the dumbest stuff.

Tim · 24:10
My kids still won't do number twos in their bathroom.

Reggie · 24:12
That's so funny. They hold it in.

Tim · 24:18
It's understandably illegal to have cameras in the bathroom, but the kids at their school wreck their bathroom like they're writing all over the walls, they're like throwing toilet paper down the toilets.

Reggie · 24:28
For us, it was just somebody would like come in to pee and see you in there

Tim · 24:33
and push you against the wall.

Reggie · 24:34
No, and then they'd go and tell everybody he was in there doing number two, and then like they'd all laugh, and then I never did it, thankfully, because I didn't want to see

Tim · 24:43
an improv, you'd be like, yes, I was doing number two, and

Reggie · 24:46
right, yes, and it was like, yeah, Reggie, come on, I wasn't gonna say anything, how cool would it have been that if they have like an improv class for like kindergarteners, so they can actually navigate. Those awkward,

Tim · 25:01
I think kindergartners always,

Reggie · 25:02
they're improv,

Tim · 25:03
they're like naturally like you embody improv, I think kindergarten, not your kindergarten,

Dylan · 25:07
that's okay, I inhaled it, I was like, all right, yeah, I'm here

Mary · 25:10
in the good way, but you

Tim · 25:12
last episode that that kid came up at the zoo, that's improv,

Mary · 25:18
this is where it's business advice, but more importantly, it's life advice. Like, I, it, it opened my brain. Sorry, I got something in my eye. It opened my brain to the idea of, okay, not everything has to start with my idea. What if I forced myself to let go a little bit and play with people, and then you start to ask yourself, okay, what's the game I'm playing?

Reggie · 25:45
Yeah,

Mary · 25:46
and I think if you can start every day like that. I heard somebody on TikTok, or whatever, who's like, yeah, I want to go with my friends, we have to come up with a bit, like, what's the bit tonight, because you know people go out to a bar or club or whatever, and then they kind of like, I think a lot of people have a really lame time, because we kind of lost the ability to like come and be and dance, whatever. So, like, they would come up with some kooky thing that they were doing that evening, and then like the whole night becomes this like three act sort of like, and then this happened, and then that happened, and you've got like a narrative structure for it. Yeah, you live like this, you don't always name the

Speaker · 26:21
name as

Mary · 26:21
a big,

Reggie · 26:22
there's always some

Speaker · 26:23
little

Reggie · 26:24
ruse. Yeah, it's funny, because you know, I was just on vacation, we did a nice hike in this wildlife reserve, which was awesome, and one of my nephews was just, you know, walking along, he's like, I saw a bear, didn't like, yeah, yeah, it was a big bear over there. Then I saw, like, I saw, like, three lizards, and he was telling me all these stories. I knew I was like, I was calling bullshit, but I was like playing alone, because it was like, I was like, he's totally improving, he's like this is,

Tim · 27:01
but that's

Reggie · 27:01
that was his imagination, like coming out, and he was sharing it with

Tim · 27:05
that's what

Reggie · 27:06
we felt like a gift to me, you know,

Tim · 27:07
but that's what we get taught not to do anymore. People call bullshit, and that's when you start having to grow up.

Reggie · 27:12
Oh yeah, there's

Tim · 27:12
no more pretend,

Reggie · 27:13
you can't say the

Tim · 27:15
right,

Mary · 27:15
no, I didn't want to do that for him. I'm like, dude, okay, what? How big was it? It's like it was really big, and like, dang, I hate I missed it. Yeah, let me know if you see it again, because I don't want to see it, you know? I feel like I missed out. But the two of you, for a moment at least, you were in this little reality bubble together, where you decided there was a bear. I just feel like there's so many times in life, and even in agency life, where, like, even if we can all like wink at the camera and be like that's not real, we could just look at each other, be like yeah, she was having a really bad day, instead of like she was really mean to me, right? Like, or you know, the even more absurd version of it, like yeah, she tripped getting out of the car this morning and spilled hot coffee all over herself, like you tell yourself the whatever

Reggie · 28:00
bad day,

Mary · 28:01
but yeah, I think there's just something about like deciding what reality you want to live in for a minute, and,

Tim · 28:07
and how

Speaker · 28:08
brave,

Mary · 28:08
call it delusion,

Tim · 28:09
how brave you're living in that reality,

Mary · 28:11
yeah, and there's a limit, right, like you can't go fudge some numbers and be like, yeah, the numbers are in financially, we should

Tim · 28:20
do this. doing, I love that you can fudge numbers at the government, but then you get your own taxes, and you can't fudge those numbers, you can't go trillions of dollars in debt in your own home taxes.

Dylan · 28:32
Oh

Reggie · 28:33
man, there

Dylan · 28:34
is

Mary · 28:35
that line, though, of like improv serves until.. and I don't know where that line in the sand is,

Reggie · 28:43
not with business, because I will tell you, I feel like when we pitch to clients, when we are at the table with clients, doesn't it feel a little bit like improv, like we go to

Tim · 28:53
the table

Reggie · 28:54
not really knowing exactly what we're going to say,

Tim · 28:56
I mean, when I think when Dylan came in, she was improving with us, oh yeah, totally, like, can you do this? Yeah, I could do that. Everyone does that.

Reggie · 29:03
Yeah, and she, but she learned. Yeah, it feels like that when we're at the table. It feels like we are creating this magical world because we're having to do a little bit of a song and dance because we want, we want the clients to trust us and give us the business because we know we're going to crush it. Yeah, and so, of course, we're just like feeding off of each other.

Mary · 29:25
Well, we just have to, and when we all take our improv class, I'm sure they'll teach us about this. You have to like make some agreements at the beginning, and a lot of times there are some implicit agreements baked into the practice of improv, like the yes and and the not negating and things, right? But then there are like games that you can play that you can also do more free form, but you kind of have to build skills in the games, and so you ask yourself, What game are you playing? What are the assumptions of that world? And I think when you go to pitch a client, or you're in a meeting with a client trying to workshop a creative idea, you as a group have made some agreements,

Reggie · 29:59
yeah. Yes,

Mary · 30:00
about like what are things that won't change,

Reggie · 30:03
kind of implied when you walk in,

Mary · 30:05
yeah. And I think if we're all in agreement about the input, so to speak, that's why like research matters a lot, and having like a body of facts, if you will, just for everybody to say yes, I agree. Yeah, exactly,

Reggie · 30:18
yeah, like a fax machine,

Mary · 30:19
talk about old facts.

Reggie · 30:24
Siri once accidentally put F A X as I was voice transcribing my text instead of F A C T S, so it became this writing joke. I'm like

Tim · 30:35
age appropriate, correct.

Mary · 30:40
Long story short, I think you're completely right that it's like the whole point is not to come in with a preconceived idea and fight for that idea. The idea is come in with an idea and see how it evolves and is shaped by the conversation and let it go.

Tim · 30:55
I don't know. In this, this perspective is shared by the whole industry. There are a lot of.. I know, creatives in general will fight for their ideas. There are a lot of agencies that literally, and I've been here as well, literally feel like they know the right answer against whatever the client says.

Mary · 31:10
Oh, I've never known that feeling.

Tim · 31:12
But Reggie and I were meeting with a pretty well-known designer, and he said that his perspective when he would go in with a client was like they were his friends, and this is a really, really successful designer, the top, and he said that when he would go in and they would suggest when they edits, he'd be like, yeah, and he really like would work with them, you know, we're taught to like, oh, the client always says make the logo bigger, the

Speaker · 31:40
client,

Mary · 31:40
we hold the line of what good is the standard

Tim · 31:44
exactly, and we're like this, we have our noses up at what what looks good and what doesn't look good, and when he said that, I totally, like, I felt myself soften toward,

Reggie · 31:54
like,

Tim · 31:54
connect with, felt the client feeling,

Reggie · 31:57
yeah,

Tim · 31:57
instead of fighting for this, is I want this, or then getting offended,

Reggie · 32:01
I mean, the reality is clients can actually, because it's not their world, they can come up with some ideas that feel like you do want to, like, scoff at them, that's the reality, but his perspective really did shift the perception of that, when a client comes up with an idea, they're just trying to communicate the essence of what they like,

Tim · 32:21
like an objective.

Reggie · 32:23
Yeah, so the challenge is to our friends, to our friends' perspective, like, is to take that and turn it into something a little more positive and a little more collaborative, like, okay, well, I hear what you're saying, yeah, but maybe this is what you mean, or maybe something like this might work, and it, like you said, it feels more like a friendship and less like I'm the designer and you're the client, you have no idea what you're talking about. We're

Mary · 32:49
here to solve a problem, like at the end of the day, yes, we love design and we

Reggie · 32:52
love

Mary · 32:53
making things, but if it doesn't solve a problem or help somebody, and we can't tell them what would help them, you know, they've got to tell us in a way, and we just support them on that journey.

Reggie · 33:04
We've got to listen,

Tim · 33:05
and that is literally improv. I've said, 'You just said yeah, hear what you're saying, and

Reggie · 33:10
yeah, and

Tim · 33:11
you take the story further.

Reggie · 33:13
You take it further, yeah, and you don't make them feel embarrassed for bringing it up, and

Tim · 33:17
you don't get offended.

Reggie · 33:19
I have done that in the past, where a client came up with this wackady idea, and I was like, that's gonna be bad for this, that, and the other, and their reaction was a little jarring, because I could tell I had offended them

Speaker · 33:32
when

Reggie · 33:33
it wasn't my intent, but I was like, oh, this is definitely, there's a better way to handle this, there's a better way to do this, and I think what our friend taught us, that is it. You treat them like a friend,

Mary · 33:45
yeah.

Reggie · 33:46
And most of our clients become friends anyway, so it's not a far stretch.

Tim · 33:49
Yeah, how do you not become a yes man, though, or yes woman?

Reggie · 33:53
I mean, I think you still hold a, you still have your expertise that you draw from, and so there's a way to challenge those ideas in a playful or even just more collaborative way, so the client feels like they're a part of the process, but they're not being shamed, and they're not having to give anything up. You're just taking what they're giving you, and you're turning into something a little more evolved, and that probably makes them feel like they're contributing, and then it's a win, you know? You're not just saying yes, I'm going to do that. You're saying I see where you're saying, how can we approach that in this way? You know,

Mary · 34:29
I will say, though, improv is better when everybody knows

Reggie · 34:35
the game,

Mary · 34:36
the, yeah, the basics. What game are we playing? We've made the agreements, and that's not always the case, especially if you've just met someone who potentially could be a client, and you're trying to establish that rapport, treat them like a friend. I think we as a group actually really struggle with this, and in particular, right now we are like adopting some new ways of working that make it easy for. Easier for us to take on bigger projects, and we're really excited about it, but it means that some of the, we call them legacy clients, who maybe knew me or Tim or Reggie, whoever, before when we weren't together as 40 hearts, they have expectations about a way of working, or like they were playing in a different frame or a different game, and I think it's hard to, I don't want to say stick to your guns, because that's not at all what we're doing, but just to like hold space for like, well, this is the quality standard that I feel I need to meet to be like fulfilled in my work, or I need this much money in order to do that work, is such a difficult thing to say, but I think

Reggie · 35:42
it, but it's so important

Speaker · 35:43
because

Reggie · 35:44
we want to make sure that we are able to solve the problem, and sadly it takes a lot, it takes a certain amount of time, which is tied to money to be able to solve those problems effectively.

Mary · 35:55
Yeah, and I think that there's

Mary · 36:00
a thing that I'm playing with right now, I'll let you know how it goes. Is you know, clients bring us their feelings all the time. They might not be naming it as a feeling at all times, because we get weird and we get heebie jeebies about having feelings at work at all, but a client will bring you a feeling masked as sometimes like a business problem or a management problem, more often than not, and it's our job to like deal with those feelings, like you're saying, work through it, and not ram up against it. But I feel like the moments where I've had success with that, if I can call it that, are there moments when I also share how I'm feeling, and without like dumping it on someone, like I feel this way, fix it, but just being able to like hold space here and be like that's making me a little uncomfortable because I'm, I'm worried that I won't be able to fill in the blank or whatever, and it's not your job to solve it for me, but I have to acknowledge, so this is me saying I care about you and how you feel, and I'm hoping that you care about me and how I feel, and I'm about to learn with your response, whatever you say to that next is going to teach me what's true and what's not. Frankly, if they can't respond to that, that teaches you something about where you stand, and I feel like the limit shifts a little bit,

Reggie · 37:13
regardless of the dynamic. There's a lesson to be had in it, and it helps dictate how you move forward,

Mary · 37:18
like, oh, you want to have this kind of

Reggie · 37:20
relationship.

Mary · 37:20
All right, well, at that distance, here's what I can offer you. I

Reggie · 37:24
think I do that in friendships too, because I am a pretty open guy, like I am totally, and I feel like my deepest, closest friendships are people that I can say what I want or what I'm feeling, and not have to mask it, and not have to, you know, hide behind some veil of perfection, and you know, wellness, but when you're just getting to meet someone, and you're just sort of, you know, flirting with what kind of friendship this is going to be, say something, and they're like, oh, that's an overshare, or whatever, and you're like, okay, not

Mary · 37:59
there yet,

Speaker · 38:00
maybe

Reggie · 38:02
we won't be there.

Mary · 38:02
a little bit of a dance, like, okay, at what point do I start to insert more of my personality into this, and you know what's too much or what's just enough.

Tim · 38:14
So, if you feel embodied by this, Dylan, how does it feel going through life with a line between improv and would you call it delusion, how do you feel like that line sets itself up with you as you go about your life day to day, embodied in it.

Dylan · 38:29
My life is a

Reggie · 38:30
fine line between the two.

Dylan · 38:34
We're on that tightrope, I feel, man, I

Tim · 38:40
Like, oh, got her.

Reggie · 38:44
Is this improv?

Dylan · 38:45
This is like improv is over. This is me being like, I am truly delusional. Like, when I walk in these doors and when I walk out, there is no

Mary · 38:58
vicious.

Tim · 39:00
I am delusional. I feel delusional

Mary · 39:04
at times too. Yeah, oh

Tim · 39:05
my gosh.

Dylan · 39:06
We, as a friend group, we were talking this weekend, and I was like, 'Dude, I walk into some situations and I'm like, I'm delusional that I'll get it done, so then it'll get done, and then it'll be great. I was like, 'It'll be great. I feel like when you said that, I was like, if you could imagine Miss Frizzle getting electrocuted, and she's like telling the kids, no, it's fine. Okay,

Reggie · 39:31
that's totally normal.

Dylan · 39:32
Maybe that answers your question,

Tim · 39:34
and I love it.

Mary · 39:36
But isn't that interesting? I feel like I'm just speaking to the person with the most improv experience, not someone with a lot of improv experience, but I feel like that's a thing that we lean away from in real life, but like the best improvisers lean into, like, oh, I'm being electrocuted, I'm very uncomfortable, we feel the. Need to like restrain that or push it away, whereas I think in real improv you would find a way to like emphasize and go into it a little bit further, but it does make you seem a little crazy or unconventional, and that's a hard thing, like Jekyll

Dylan · 40:14
and Hyde. Yeah,

Speaker · 40:16
well,

Tim · 40:16
well, in in the context of like theater and improv, you have the freedom to be whoever you want to be, and I think you have that in life, but you can make up stuff,

Mary · 40:27
and it's

Tim · 40:28
it's playing the game

Mary · 40:30
in theater, or in life,

Tim · 40:31
in theater. Okay, like you have the freedom, the you have the permission to play the game the way it's to be played, make up things, yeah, just come up with things

Mary · 40:39
like, oh, it's electricity, but also I am enlivened by electricity, it's actually charging me, and I'm a robot. Yeah, but

Speaker · 40:46
in

Tim · 40:46
life you have to fall back on some realities, like, okay, let's bring up this one, for instance, because this makes me feel delusional, and I've only come to this recently.

Mary · 40:54
Let's do this once a week. The

Tim · 40:59
other side of the improv penny is delusion. Yeah, no. So I did this talk on my LinkedIn channel about rich being rich.

Reggie · 41:08
Oh yeah,

Tim · 41:09
and

Reggie · 41:10
listen,

Tim · 41:10
I think I'm.. I've been delusional 12

Reggie · 41:13
plus minutes.

Tim · 41:14
It is.. it's a lot. No,

Reggie · 41:17
you know, I love you when I like to spend 12 minutes.

Tim · 41:19
You don't watch it, you can just like it. That's what LinkedIn is all about. Don't watch us like

Mary · 41:24
long form.

Reggie · 41:25
I was like,

Tim · 41:27
my most recent, like,

Reggie · 41:28
this is this is

Tim · 41:33
happening.

Speaker · 41:34
No.

Tim · 41:35
Okay, so my next one after this was a lot shorter. So,

Reggie · 41:38
yeah, I watched that one too. That's the one where you're like, I don't know, I think I was a little exposed, because

Tim · 41:44
here's the thing, is I have always thought of myself as rich, but I am nowhere near the super rich, and sometimes I think we, and I learned about this in sociology class in school, where we, we see ourselves and we relate to something above us, and kind of marketing, and the society kind of aims us towards something, which you want to be, like the American dream. The goal

Reggie · 42:09
was under another form of improvisation,

Tim · 42:11
right. And so I had learned to improv my whole life that I am rich, and the thing about it is, and what you learn in sociology is that you end up judging the rest of your, of your group, your people, who make money similar to you, and have things similar to you, you make fun of them, are in debt similar to your debt, are in have to borrow money, and all of this, all these things, you judge them as having not made it, or not doing well in their business, or not being good with money, not thinking ahead, you have all these

Reggie · 42:39
social, it's the social perception,

Tim · 42:42
right? It's a really.. and

Reggie · 42:44
you're not doing good,

Tim · 42:44
and not being rich has a lot of negative impact on your.. the impression you leave with others. Yeah,

Mary · 42:51
the ability you have to become rich is inhibited by your feeling of abundance, or whatever. And it's also preventing us from getting the class consciousness. So, I think this is worth. is this capitalism

Tim · 43:01
totally

Reggie · 43:02
right?

Tim · 43:04
Because you have to be dissatisfied with where you are to have to buy things, and to take part in the economy, you have to be dissatisfied with where you are. Else, nothing would sell. You'd be like, I'm fine, let's eat together, let's hang out, but no, you got to go out and buy this, you got to buy that, so you can look like you fit in here and you fit in there, and so if you were to do a study on people driving nice cars, how many people are in debt and imprisoned by that payment to have the car versus how many people are driving, I mean, like you hear stories of the ultra wealthy driving crappy cars, like

Speaker · 43:38
there's one, oh, totally,

Tim · 43:39
Jeff Bezos is classically known for driving a Civic when he was a billionaire, so that's just one thing that you can touch on, but so my improv has been, and this is what I came to yesterday, is that my improv has been acting like I'm that, so that I get the job, you know, they think they're their peers with, he's a player with me, he understands me,

Mary · 44:01
and you don't feel needy,

Tim · 44:02
right?

Mary · 44:03
Is the other thing,

Tim · 44:04
right? They don't,

Reggie · 44:05
you roll up in this car. Oh man, he's gonna

Tim · 44:07
try, and you know my car, like right now, is that car, and so I.. I'm struggling with it every day. I'm thinking about it. Why am I so

Reggie · 44:15
Jeff

Tim · 44:17
Bezos?

Reggie · 44:18
It's like you're Honda,

Tim · 44:20
but there's something about him actually

Speaker · 44:22
being

Reggie · 44:22
in a civic in the court,

Tim · 44:23
that's true.

Reggie · 44:24
Yeah, you're one up, but you're one, but

Tim · 44:26
you're cool if you're a billionaire and you're driving a crappy car.

Reggie · 44:29
Yeah,

Tim · 44:29
but if you don't have any money in the bank, you're driving a crappy car, that's not so cool.

Reggie · 44:32
Yeah,

Tim · 44:32
that means you're terrible with money, you're terrible with business, you don't know what you're doing. Those are the perceptions,

Speaker · 44:37
that's the whole

Reggie · 44:37
perception, though.

Tim · 44:38
So, I have improv around that my whole life, and I've been good at it. If I can avoid being seen in certain lights, like if you don't ever see my house, I mean, I don't have a small house, but

Mary · 44:50
if you don't actually make me pay for dinner,

Tim · 44:52
there are things that you can, and you can pay for dinner, you put on a credit card. I'm just saying that it pushes you to do things that you shouldn't have to be doing. Okay, and so when I said this online, then I started to be like, oh no, I can't improv that anymore,

Speaker · 45:07
right?

Mary · 45:07
Yeah, no,

Tim · 45:10
I can't say that I'm, I can't act that part,

Reggie · 45:13
and I love that. I think that was a really nice way of just like cracking open that show, and I'm like, alright, this is who I am.

Tim · 45:20
So that was my line. Little

Reggie · 45:21
thing is about authenticity, and I think you leaned into it in the best way, in that that's what I felt.

Tim · 45:26
And so my delusion is gone, but now I don't have any of the illusion, which is sometimes an enjoyable thing to have in creativity and in story.

Reggie · 45:35
Look at you, though, like you carry an essence about you that you could walk out of the shittiest car, and nobody's gonna be like, "Oh, and this guy, you know,

Tim · 45:45
I'm probably the one doing that most.

Reggie · 45:46
Yeah, you are the one doing that most, because absolutely, people see your glow, they hear you talk, they hear your convictions, they hear your, your, your intellect, and that's what comes off. It's not like, "Oh, I watched him get out of that, whatever. He's

Tim · 46:02
a loser. Yeah,

Reggie · 46:03
I mean, I think at the end of the day, I see a lot of people do that where they overspend on things they can't really afford, like they'll have a $700 a month car payment and go pull up in front of a double wide, no offense to people with double wise, we're just like you're that's all for show, like you're living in a place that maybe could be more comfortable, and if you read, if you adjusted those resources,

Mary · 46:31
it shows you like priorities,

Speaker · 46:34
yeah,

Mary · 46:34
right, priority is

Mary · 46:35
really important to them, to you know, have a huge TV or to drive a nice car, whatever that thing is,

Tim · 46:40
but here's where the, here's where it really came down to me. The car became such a hot point, because I drove it all the way through college, and then my, my one of my best friends, also his friend with my brother. My brother is a builder, as a general, has a building company, a general contractor, and he was working for this friend of ours, and my brother sees this other guy from a competing builder company pull up to the house next to them. He says, "Whoa, look at that truck. Look how much money that guy spent on that truck, and he's not spending it on da da. And my friend said, "I actually think that guy's more successful in his business than you are with your van. And when I heard that, I was like, "That is

Reggie · 47:20
that

Tim · 47:20
it wasn't my. So my brother had this sense that he's wasting all this money and going into debt for this truck, but the perception from Mother Gren was that he looked at that job or that guy's work as higher end because the guy has a nicer vehicle.

Reggie · 47:33
Oh, wow,

Tim · 47:34
so that's where it hit me that someone will look at your, your, your. what is it like? Your taste,

Reggie · 47:43
yeah,

Tim · 47:43
they're looking at your taste level,

Reggie · 47:44
yeah,

Tim · 47:45
and they're like, you're driving that, your taste level must not be up to snuff.

Dylan · 47:51
My coolest friends right now, they're wearing $2 flip flops and like jeans that have been worn for the past 20 years.

Reggie · 47:59
See, I love that, and that's like leaning into it, like I'm not trying to.. I don't know,

Dylan · 48:03
I think perception is a really hard thing, and it's of course I can sit here and be like, don't listen to perception, like you know, like that could be like a really light.. what a great takeaway from this episode, yeah, what a great hater, yeah, yeah, like what a cliche answer,

Reggie · 48:18
what if we did just completely ignore perception and go our own way.

Dylan · 48:22
To me, internally, it's like my perception. I've got it like five people on my hand, like they're like their opinions matter. And I think when we get too much on a broad scope, yeah, you're on that three

Mary · 48:35
of them are here.

Dylan · 48:36
Yeah, three of them

Mary · 48:37
are here, counting. Well, yeah,

Dylan · 48:39
I don't know. I think that's like that's like the hard part of like being human right now is like everybody is giving their perception and their idea, and it's like, who, like, that's I mean, that perception is really hard for me to value because they're not in my inner circle, like if what matters more, the car that I drive or would I put my life on the line for you to like go and do something, and like follow your dreams, and give you support. So, I don't know. I hate perception, because she's kind of a bitch, but she's.. she does run us sometimes.

Mary · 49:13
I'm gonna do you one better half the time, talking about cars half the time. I can't tell if it's because I don't want someone to think the wrong thing about me, that comes up all the time, or is it my own sense of self that it's like I am in the middle of a fashion crisis? I complain about it to Dylan three times a week. We're working on, yeah,

Speaker · 49:38
because Dylan has never tried, she's got her shit.

Mary · 49:42
I

Tim · 49:44
think we're about to say she says sexy

Mary · 49:50
people don't argue, but for men it's a different standard. It's like there's a prescribed, and by the way, you should challenge that. I want to see kilts, I want to see. Skirts, I want to see high heels, but

Speaker · 50:05
wearing a kilt plunge. Let me get out of my take it off

Mary · 50:13
and get to watch Traders and just embody Alan coming

Reggie · 50:17
to your heritage.

Speaker · 50:19
I love

Tim · 50:20
it. I don't

Speaker · 50:21
know,

Tim · 50:22
I don't know.

Mary · 50:26
It was one thing for Tim to take all his clothes off, another thing for him to put a kilt back

Reggie · 50:31
on, dudes,

Mary · 50:32
but I'm just saying, like, men's expression in their fashion is so one note right now, and frankly, it's a little boring, but we expect it. Not you two ready

Tim · 50:44
to wear a crop shirt, but he would not do it.

Mary · 50:46
I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna say, and I'm gonna try to never say it again. What are you working out for if you

Tim · 50:53
don't? Okay, let's just do it. I'm working out so I can move, and then some strong

Reggie · 51:01
without the creeks,

Mary · 51:07
so I'm just saying, like I'm in a store, or rarely am I, I'm usually shopping online because I can't find anything that I like, and I'm thinking to myself, oh well, I like that, and then there's like the abstraction of, do I like it to look at on somebody else, or do I would I feel like me when I was wearing it. And then you have to get into, like, well, where would I wear this, which for women is a much more complicated thing than.. and then you're like in this weird zone, and I'm so rarely thinking, oh well, what will other people think of me? I'm thinking, like, do I like the way this looks? Is this a color that I like? Does this embody or express something about who I am? And half the time I can't figure that part out. So, when we talk about expression, it's like, or yeah, or perception. I'm like, who are these voices in my head, and is that truly me, or am I hearing a critic that I've picked up somewhere.

Speaker · 52:01
Do

Tim · 52:02
you want to hear my, your

Speaker · 52:03
inner monolog? Yeah, Tim, tell me fashion advice.

Tim · 52:07
I also had a fashion crisis, but I have a Megan, so yeah, that was a big.. I'm

Mary · 52:10
trying to get a Megan. It's not working out for.. we all are coffee with your wife yesterday. Yeah, she looked great,

Tim · 52:19
great. And I.. she was trying to help me, because she's really good with this stuff, and she's like, "Who do you want to look like? and I was like,

Speaker · 52:26
"Me,

Tim · 52:26
no, I didn't say that, that would have been better, but that's a dead end, that's a dead end roads, I don't know what me looks like, I said Indiana Jones and James Bond, she's like, so you want like a tux with like a satchel and a gun. This is where.. no. So, what I felt, and this is what is.. I want to feel like they feel, because they feel like they are.. they are what they are, you know? Their outfit fits their life and their work and their thing. Okay, I'm tracking it

Mary · 53:01
now. Okay,

Tim · 53:02
it's You know, but yes, could be pants at Indiana Jones,

Mary · 53:05
right? You're right,

Tim · 53:06
this could be like what James Bond wore when he's like at his, yeah,

Mary · 53:10
Daniel Craig kind of,

Speaker · 53:12
yeah,

Mary · 53:12
okay.

Tim · 53:13
So if you take something that you're like child, childishly, childishly, yeah, into the

Mary · 53:19
idea to go like archetype first, and then back into

Tim · 53:22
it, and you feel your way into it, versus like this flattened this top, but this is what all the subscriptions do, you know, you want this top with these bottoms, and to me it always felt so forced and contrived. I wanted to feel something that's natural, and I think Indiana Jones and James Bond feel very natural to me, like he fights in a tuxedo, and Indian Jones, like, uses his whip to, like, go over.

Reggie · 53:46
I think it's

Mary · 53:48
Tim with a pencil

Reggie · 53:49
very

Mary · 53:50
sharp

Reggie · 53:52
shirt. I think the thing that you're, that you're identifying in there, it's not natural as much as confidence, like what they're wearing allows them to be confident with what they're doing. I dress so like I think to myself when I put something on, how do I feel? Do I feel confident? Do I feel like I am me? I can be myself. I can be my best self. Is my outfit gonna hold back my personality or my character.

Mary · 54:21
Sometimes I've said, can I climb a tree in that, and that's like

Reggie · 54:28
he scoffed and left the

Tim · 54:31
room.

Mary · 54:32
I ever like got to live into that fully, and we can talk about the wise adventure. Yeah, it's just like the doing of it all, like I don't like to feel restricted and confined, and I think a lot of women's clothes do that, but then I wear shit like this, which I feel like I could physically, I could climb a tree, but is it appropriate every day? Yeah, y'all get in the river and I.

Speaker · 54:57
Clean

Dylan · 55:01
tree

Tim · 55:02
climbing club

Speaker · 55:12
Only

Tim · 55:15
Fans just

Reggie · 55:18
climbing trees

Speaker · 55:20
plantationally draped over English. The

Reggie · 55:23
camera would have to be perspective at the top

Mary · 55:29
pictures.

Mary · 55:29
The goats who climb, there's like goats who climb into trees, but it's women.

Reggie · 55:35
Goats,

Mary · 55:36
very Capricorn of me.

Reggie · 55:38
There's a woman that does that, does this. I'd stumble, I don't know what the hell. No, not naked, not naked. She climbed

Tim · 55:44
trees,

Reggie · 55:45
but there is something I don't know why my algorithm fed me this, but this was on Instagram, and there's this woman who climbs trees, like that's her thing. And so she will go out with her family for a hike, and they're like, all right, this is a good one, is your time, and she'll climb up the tree,

Speaker · 56:01
I love

Reggie · 56:02
that, that's her

Tim · 56:03
climbable tree. I never admit that, because it seems so childish, but

Mary · 56:08
that would, there's an easy starting limb, and then there's another one, it's like a ladder, it's me to get up there,

Reggie · 56:14
tree, and was like barking at dogs, delusion, she was totally barking. People were like, okay, lady, crazy tree lady.

Tim · 56:30
Well, we were at my, my son's preschool egg hunt for Easter, Easter, and this girl just starts, cute little girl with red curly hair, just starts climbing the little dogwood, and the dogwood is like this

Reggie · 56:43
tall dog, it's

Tim · 56:44
the tiniest dogwood, and I'm like worried about the blimp, but I'm not gonna tell a kid not to climb a tree, that

Reggie · 56:50
is like the tree,

Tim · 56:53
no,

Reggie · 56:54
I'm like, hey, here's a better tree for the pastor

Tim · 56:56
of this, this, it's like, you know, preschool in the church, the pastor has to come over and tell her that we're not climbing the tree, and I was like, I was not the adult,

Reggie · 57:06
we're not climbing that

Tim · 57:07
tree. Yeah, tree climbing. I feel like that's a very freeing adventure. That's what I think. That's what fashion is about to me, is what gives you the sense of adventure.

Mary · 57:15
Yeah, what can I do in this outfit? Who could I be in this outright?

Tim · 57:18
And it would make.. I think it makes you more, as you were saying, Reggie, it makes you more improv ready, because you're like at the.. you're like on

Reggie · 57:25
it. Yeah, you

Speaker · 57:26
didn't do

Reggie · 57:26
anything

Tim · 57:27
right, you're not like feeling

Reggie · 57:28
whatever you're gonna throw at me restricted. This outfit is ready for whatever you're gonna throw at me.

Speaker · 57:32
Yes, I'm

Reggie · 57:33
ready. Let's do

Speaker · 57:34
it,

Mary · 57:34
and I get that. What, like Reggie, you always seem comfortable.. like no matter where we put you, you like, are always at ease.

Tim · 57:42
Well, let me explain. It's because

Reggie · 57:43
of one on

Tim · 57:44
one. Let me explain to you how Reggie shops.

Mary · 57:46
It's because Reggie's like grounded, and he is.

Tim · 57:48
When we went, when we went shopping, I brought my Megan, and she did my shopping, and I tried on things. Reggie's out there shopping himself. He's got like 45 hangers over his arm. He's like,

Mary · 58:00
he

Tim · 58:02
was set and like a 10th at a time that I live, yeah,

Mary · 58:04
like just he's figured it out, and you're like looking at it like it's a quantum mechanic, which I relate

Tim · 58:14
to. What is the meaning of this khaki pants

Mary · 58:19
where they're gonna spend the $200 on, like the plain khaki pants, dude. That's

Speaker · 58:24
totally

Reggie · 58:24
you. Like, wait, what's khaki? What kind of vibe do khaki paint, and what do the.. what's Gen Z think about khaki

Mary · 58:31
pants?

Mary · 58:32
What is

Tim · 58:33
it? How do you shop? Because you always look good.

Dylan · 58:36
There's this line from The Blind Side, and it's Sandra Bullock, and she's like, well, she's like walking big Mike into the store, and she's like, well, if you don't love it on the hanger, you're not gonna love it when you're at home, and that's kind of

Speaker · 58:50
just why,

Tim · 58:51
like, you love,

Dylan · 58:52
yeah. I also like, I see it, if I was like, there's different ways, there's like clothes you can wear, and you're like, okay, this is safe, but then there's clothes I could wear when, like, I'm playing a bit, or we're like going out, like you mentioned earlier,

Reggie · 59:07
like when you're putting your colored wig,

Dylan · 59:08
yeah, when I wear my colored wig outside, did happen, so I just

Tim · 59:16
see you're like, I think y'all go similar, you find you drawn to it, you love

Reggie · 59:20
it, and that's what I do. I look at it on a hanger, and I'm like, oh, and I usually can tell when I first see something. I'm sure you're the same way.

Speaker · 59:27
Yeah,

Reggie · 59:28
that's gonna look good on you. I also, it's all about the fit after that,

Dylan · 59:31
like clothes, body shapes, yeah, that all plays a picture, but like you're wearing the clothes, the clothes aren't wearing you,

Tim · 59:37
that's true.

Dylan · 59:38
So, like,

Dylan · 59:39
if I

Dylan · 59:42
don't know.

Tim · 59:44
And clothes feels like they wear me, you know? I feel like I'm just like behind it,

Mary · 59:48
yeah, instead

Tim · 59:48
of in it, you know, like I'm this like in front of me somehow.

Dylan · 59:51
I understand. This

Tim · 59:52
is how I think. This is what's messed

Dylan · 59:54
up my brain. This is what my mom thinks. My mom has such like an existential crisis right now, shopping. Yeah, and so I'm just like, Mom, like, wear whatever you want, and now she's wearing like the hair scarf down. She looks like a Billy Badass, like

Reggie · 1:00:10
back in here for lunch.

Dylan · 1:00:11
We do scars great, but yeah, I think, like, I don't know, I don't, don't think too deep.

Tim · 1:00:17
Oh man,

Dylan · 1:00:17
just try something alright. Advice,

Tim · 1:00:19
that it know that is great advice, but I don't know if it's possible.

Dylan · 1:00:22
It's very cliche,

Reggie · 1:00:23
not gonna follow

Mary · 1:00:25
the overthinkers

Tim · 1:00:27
and thinking I think, therefore I am

Mary · 1:00:30
beautiful

Tim · 1:00:32
shit, man. I need to

Speaker · 1:00:33
do some

Reggie · 1:00:33
more thinking about the thinking.

Mary · 1:00:36
Have I thought about this thinking hard enough? Do you think maybe you should

Dylan · 1:00:39
improv

Dylan · 1:00:40
next time you wear clothes.

Reggie · 1:00:42
Actually, what a great.. that's a great what if statement. What if you improv when you go to try on clothes? I like this. Actually, it's totally.. I'll get stage fright. Throw away every.. no, you won't.

Mary · 1:00:55
No, I go the other way. And my mom and I have always.. I grew up in the theater, so we like have a bunch of things that we're like, yeah, I could totally wear that, but it's like it is a different character flavor of me, yeah, but the problem is I so rarely wake up, I'm like, I've built a closet for a bunch of me,

Dylan · 1:01:17
isn't it with improv, you don't neglect, you just go, no negate, yeah,

Mary · 1:01:22
or neglect, or no neglect, no

Mary · 1:01:24
good,

Dylan · 1:01:25
yeah, yeah.

Mary · 1:01:28
And then I just go. We say this thing in our house, it's from the Disney Channel original movie Brink. Oh, you're familiar, and there's a.. he's like a X Games. like I'm giving too many details, half of these are going to be wrong, but

Speaker · 1:01:44
he's

Mary · 1:01:44
like, like a skater dude from like the 90s, and there's like a villain skater dude, and they've got weird like sexual tension that nobody talks about because it was Disney Channel, whatever, but he's like in the middle of a competitive event and he's not doing well, and his little like brat kid sister comes up to him, and he's, she's like, skate better, and then he's like, skate better, great idea, but no, it's really good advice. I'm bad at advice, I'm bad at taking it, I'm bad at advice too. No, I'm just like, I can't, I'm struggling, is all I'm trying

Tim · 1:02:20
to, so is it important to know the line between improv and delusion? Because wouldn't an inventor inventing something seem delusional? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I'm like, if you walk into a client meeting and you have an idea that is huge and someone could say that's delusional, let's get real, what can we really expect to see, and that's fine. Like, I think that we've been in a data-driven economy and market, it's just been everyone's just feeding off the data. But what is that level of, like, delusion that takes us to the next level? You know, like, is there a better way to have an economy versus capitalism?

Speaker · 1:02:59
That is true. Is

Tim · 1:03:00
there a better way to have a company, maybe owned by the employees? Is there, so it's, it's like that improv, the play can be used in business, I think. What if play is a part of business to push us to the next level, the imaginative sci-fi level, where you know they say once you see something in sci-fi, it's only a matter of time before

Dylan · 1:03:23
it

Tim · 1:03:23
becomes a reality, because someone is improving and delusional that someone would have a phone that they can connect with the internet and do all this power.

Reggie · 1:03:32
Say, what if delusion really is just the precursor to improv, and then ultimately success, because

Tim · 1:03:38
I feel

Reggie · 1:03:39
like most things that we, that have become commonplace, like cell phones, like

Tim · 1:03:46
cars, and like the first person to see a car, like what,

Reggie · 1:03:48
totally, like AI, like all of these things. I was started off as someone's delusional idea that they didn't give up on,

Tim · 1:03:56
exactly. So I'm like, I like Dylan's, I

Speaker · 1:03:59
like delusion, embody, embody the improv, embody.

Reggie · 1:04:02
I think delusion and improv can help change the world. You just can't give up on it.

Mary · 1:04:08
What if we start with delusion and we back into reality, instead of like starting with reality and hoping we get to something

Speaker · 1:04:14
great? You won't ever hit posted. Reality

Tim · 1:04:15
is like a brick,

Mary · 1:04:16
yeah, break.

Reggie · 1:04:17
They say fail faster, like get the big delusional idea out there. See how it floats,

Tim · 1:04:23
you know? See, someone had this idea, they say the big hairy idea, right? Yeah, I like delusion better. Yeah,

Mary · 1:04:29
crazy thing about this. Yeah,

Reggie · 1:04:33
wow, we should change our, our little sub line, our byline to 40 hearts, the delusional creative company.

Mary · 1:04:45
Where's

Speaker · 1:04:46
the lie?

Tim · 1:04:47
Grandeur done.

Reggie · 1:04:52
I

Speaker · 1:04:53
love that.

Mary · 1:04:53
So true. It's a little scary.

Reggie · 1:04:57
On that note, I am gonna.. I'm gonna wrap. Bus up if you like this. If this is your kind of vibe,

Tim · 1:05:04
smash the like

Reggie · 1:05:05
button, talking

Dylan · 1:05:07
for all this

Reggie · 1:05:08
kind of a thing. Like and subscribe.

Mary · 1:05:15
Actually, can

Reggie · 1:05:17
you please like it, subscribe, and share, but if you feel like

Mary · 1:05:23
your friends listen to this,

Reggie · 1:05:25
if you feel like this is your, your crew, we're here, like we're devotional

Mary · 1:05:31
in our office, we honestly, you know,

Reggie · 1:05:35
yeah, come hang out, come, you know, come work with us, give us work, whatever, but definitely check in to our next episode, because we do this week after week. I don't know exactly how we're going to roll them out, but I can tell you that we will be doing episodes, and we will hope every week that you come and take a listen or watch. And with that, I will bid you adieu, and thank you for being here.

Mary · 1:06:02
All that is certain, as we will be making episodes.

Tim · 1:06:08
We don't know what.

Mary · 1:06:09
Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, Mary Green, and Dylan Garcia. Produced by me, Mary Green. Live production and editing by Will Canady. Graphic design by Dylan Garcia, and set design by Megan Scroggs. Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 Hearts, creators of Enduring Value.