Mark Linsenmayer (host of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast) and Bill Arnett (head of the Chicago Improv Studio) each try to teach each other their crafts via conversation, sketches, and what can only be called performance art. No taking turns!
The scene is its own entity. What else might be its own entity? Can a machine that passes the Turing test know what it’s like to be a bat? We bring in emotions from irrelevant contexts, and we ke…
What is “othering”? Why did Bill get such a bad grade? Is it because of his feather quill pen? Don’t miss our anti-vaxxer drama!
This is our first episode with a real philosophy professor on i…
Let’s all lose our jobs and talk instead about fundamental ontology and social dynamics.
Image by I don’t remember. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop.
Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get…
Hell is NOT other people, and the more the merrier, with our second episode with guests being with TWO guest improvisers, Jill, co-founder of HUGE Theater and her friend Michelle, owner of Improv…
Riffing on resemblance. Eventually invoking the spirit of a toaster. Mark is wrong: the God Emperor of Dune can’t drink water at all, just dried food.
Philosophy bare…
Do you believe in miracles? If doctors believed in miracles, would they just let surgeries finish themselves? Do assumptions of a logical universe make it not just unjustified by psychologically …
Who stole Carmine’s lunch? I think you know. Are there only a certain number of “logical” directions from one idea to another? Are there no mistakes, or are there mistakes that know?
This week…
Are so-called “material objects” really just a scam? These two cut-ups (Bill and Mark) cut up the world in various ways, showing you how to teach, how to act, and how to haggle.
Learn more ab…
Beauty is cool, but is art always aiming at beauty? Generations disagree about their music. Snakes disagree about how much they should worry.
Image by 3rd grader Ariana; google says the image …
Bill gets really real, with his unlogical emotions. When we feel things, do we know why? Is there a why?
Image found in a serious academic paper to reflect the seriousness (the snapped bra str…
Bill gets to have the power of live and death, with a bit of moral luck. Is he enthused?
Image found on twitter by a kid told to draw a fruit salad. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop.
Turkeys speculate in a game scene. Are they reasonable and/or jive turkeys? Then, geometry is subject to ad hominem attack in an instructive relationship scene.
Image by Ava from this site. Au…
Why is lying wrong? Scene conceptions clash. It is hard to lie in a pretend scene, because the pretending is already a lie. You can lie inside-out or outside-in.
The relevant PEL episode to fi…
Mark and Bill do impressions of people you don’t know. The is-ought distinction is bravely explored. Does pretending to be cavemen help? Magic business is afoot. Childhood speaks.
We’ve now pa…
Does it make sense to try to have everyone get what they “deserve”? We act out the desert machine but yet get no predictable cake.
Judgebot 5000 enters our lives. Is this our first really go…
We try to be boring. Bill tries to make a discovery amidst the canards. Mark tries to be a good meta-dupe. But is our success in these attempts guaranteed by the deal you have already made with u…
Two micro scenes and a mystery number of interruptions reveal our underlying definitions. How will we overcome the lag between our words and become like-minded? How many beats in an heirloom beet…
Is death something to be feared? What’s next? What are the DETAILS? Do not adjust your listening device or call an ambulance. That sound you hear is not ground hum nor tinnitus but is the sound o…
Bill starts us with a scene: Behold the Doctor’s Office, where anything can happen, and often DOES. Is this whole thing a bad idea? Do you think you’re BETTER than this idea? Do you? If you need …
Mark starts us off this time: What is reality? Bill pushes back, which is rather his point this round. Hilarity ensues, given that the world is just a construct of our minds and we want it to do …