WEBVTT 00:00:00.110 --> 00:00:02.890 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the SoCap 00:00:02.890 --> 00:00:05.990 Improv Comedy Podcast. My name's Ralph McLeod. 00:00:06.030 --> 00:00:08.949 I am the owner and artistic director of the SoCap 00:00:08.949 --> 00:00:12.509 Comedy Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. We're at 00:00:12.509 --> 00:00:16.609 154 Danforth Avenue above the Black Swan Tavern 00:00:16.609 --> 00:00:18.649 on the second and third floor. We do shows, classes, 00:00:19.089 --> 00:00:22.390 events, corporate events, rentals, you name it. 00:00:22.489 --> 00:00:25.870 If you come to me with an idea, I'll run with 00:00:25.870 --> 00:00:29.100 it. And every podcast has a sponsor. Today's 00:00:29.100 --> 00:00:31.399 sponsor is Burt Reynolds Boat Rentals. That's 00:00:31.399 --> 00:00:34.659 right. Burt Reynolds Boat Rentals. The late Burt 00:00:34.659 --> 00:00:38.299 Reynolds Boat Rental Company. So if you're looking 00:00:38.299 --> 00:00:40.280 for a boat to rent, come to Burt Reynolds Boat 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:44.119 Rentals and we will fix you up just off Highway 00:00:44.119 --> 00:00:50.020 69. Anyway, I hope you're all doing very well. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.939 Yeah, so what this podcast is about is about 00:00:54.939 --> 00:00:59.880 improv and more related to improv, not for performance 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:03.340 so much, although I certainly will cover performance 00:01:03.340 --> 00:01:07.140 topics, but also like why somebody who has no 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:10.219 interest in being a comedian or getting on stage 00:01:10.219 --> 00:01:12.459 would ever want to take an improv class. What? 00:01:12.540 --> 00:01:15.099 Why? Why would you want to do that? Well, I've 00:01:15.099 --> 00:01:18.799 gone over some things, and today what I want 00:01:18.799 --> 00:01:22.439 to talk about is how... improv can help you build 00:01:22.439 --> 00:01:27.000 empathy uh it's i think it's estimated that something 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:29.859 like one percent of the population are psychopaths 00:01:29.859 --> 00:01:32.780 and sociopaths and i don't even know uh how many 00:01:32.780 --> 00:01:34.920 narcissists there are although according to robert 00:01:34.920 --> 00:01:38.939 green uh in his book uh about the 48 rules of 00:01:38.939 --> 00:01:42.319 power laws of power uh his new one whose title 00:01:42.319 --> 00:01:44.980 escapes me but robert green is a great writer 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:47.670 and i and i recommend If you're interested in 00:01:47.670 --> 00:01:50.250 human nature, pick up any of his books. The Law 00:01:50.250 --> 00:01:54.010 of Seduction, 48 Laws of Power, and this new 00:01:54.010 --> 00:01:56.489 one. That name, I can't remember it. But if you 00:01:56.489 --> 00:01:59.629 Google him, I'm sure you'll find it. Anyway, 00:01:59.769 --> 00:02:03.250 he says that we're all narcissists. Because sometimes, 00:02:03.469 --> 00:02:05.310 of course, it's a spectrum and we can all be 00:02:05.310 --> 00:02:11.189 a little narcissistic at times. But he puts most 00:02:11.189 --> 00:02:15.250 people in the healthy narcissist category. tend 00:02:15.250 --> 00:02:18.009 to like having people talk about you. You like 00:02:18.009 --> 00:02:19.689 to be their center of attention, but you don't 00:02:19.689 --> 00:02:23.169 need it and you don't resent it every time someone 00:02:23.169 --> 00:02:26.449 else is the center of attention. Anyway, one 00:02:26.449 --> 00:02:29.189 of the ways that they are treating psychopaths 00:02:29.189 --> 00:02:32.150 and sociopaths is by developing their empathy. 00:02:32.490 --> 00:02:35.250 It's really interesting. One thing they're doing 00:02:35.250 --> 00:02:37.509 is they show them pictures of hands touching 00:02:37.509 --> 00:02:41.189 and then ask them to describe what they're watching. 00:02:41.310 --> 00:02:43.610 And it helps activate the centers of the brain. 00:02:44.319 --> 00:02:47.740 that are a little less, shall we say, active 00:02:47.740 --> 00:02:50.639 in psychopaths and sociopaths. So they learn 00:02:50.639 --> 00:02:53.979 how to empathize with people. But if you're not 00:02:53.979 --> 00:02:56.159 a psychopath or a sociopath, or even if you are, 00:02:56.259 --> 00:03:02.199 because we don't judge. Yes. Well, okay, now 00:03:02.199 --> 00:03:05.979 I've said it. No, SoCap is open to everybody 00:03:05.979 --> 00:03:09.060 except people, except abusers. That's, you know. 00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:12.080 So the one rule at SOCAP or a rule at SOCAP is 00:03:12.080 --> 00:03:15.439 don't come if you're an abuser, if you abuse 00:03:15.439 --> 00:03:19.539 people. But we take everybody. I don't care your 00:03:19.539 --> 00:03:25.580 religion or your age or anything. Just don't 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:29.879 just don't be enough. But anyway, back to the 00:03:29.879 --> 00:03:32.900 topic at hand that I was talking about is empathy. 00:03:33.599 --> 00:03:38.189 And, you know, because we're all like. in our 00:03:38.189 --> 00:03:42.250 little worlds we do our things and uh you know 00:03:42.250 --> 00:03:46.050 you may be you know a boss you may not be a boss 00:03:46.050 --> 00:03:49.569 you may be a parent you may not be a parent you 00:03:49.569 --> 00:03:52.490 may be a teacher you may not be a teacher but 00:03:52.490 --> 00:03:55.169 what improv allows you to do is role play all 00:03:55.169 --> 00:03:58.289 different kinds of scenarios you know you can 00:03:58.289 --> 00:04:00.449 if you're uh if you're male you could play a 00:04:00.449 --> 00:04:05.740 female character but vice versa and uh when i 00:04:05.740 --> 00:04:08.819 teach at least uh i always encourage people to 00:04:08.819 --> 00:04:13.219 be the smartest versions of themselves there's 00:04:13.219 --> 00:04:15.800 an interesting thing about improv uh whenever 00:04:15.800 --> 00:04:18.759 anybody plays like a doctor someone said this 00:04:18.759 --> 00:04:20.579 and i wish i knew who said it because it's absolutely 00:04:20.579 --> 00:04:24.839 true that you would never go uh as a patient 00:04:24.839 --> 00:04:29.079 to an improv doctor uh because i mean of course 00:04:29.079 --> 00:04:30.759 you wouldn't anyway but you wouldn't because 00:04:30.759 --> 00:04:34.569 everybody who plays a doctor uh, will be a bad 00:04:34.569 --> 00:04:36.230 example of a doctor. Like they won't know what 00:04:36.230 --> 00:04:37.910 they're doing. They'll operate with chainsaws. 00:04:38.269 --> 00:04:40.629 Uh, they'll just take a heart out in the middle 00:04:40.629 --> 00:04:43.129 of the afternoon in their living room. You know, 00:04:43.149 --> 00:04:45.949 they don't. And, um, I'm always encouraging people 00:04:45.949 --> 00:04:48.689 to be, no, no, no, no, no. Be a competent surgeon. 00:04:49.209 --> 00:04:51.050 Uh, if you're a surgeon or a doctor, like the 00:04:51.050 --> 00:04:53.149 best, I mean, obviously, you know, if you have 00:04:53.149 --> 00:04:56.269 no experience and I had no experience, I don't 00:04:56.269 --> 00:04:58.490 know, but I've seen it on TV. I think enough 00:04:58.490 --> 00:05:01.629 to, that I could, um, fake my way through it. 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:05.160 In a way that if a surgeon watched me, I mean, 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:07.720 of course, they'd find lots of problems and faults. 00:05:07.980 --> 00:05:09.980 But it'd be like, okay, you know, for someone 00:05:09.980 --> 00:05:11.379 who doesn't know anything about what they're 00:05:11.379 --> 00:05:13.500 doing, that's okay. That's what I'm trying to 00:05:13.500 --> 00:05:17.000 get to. It's like, it's trying to not butcher 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:20.540 being a doctor. Because I think people think 00:05:20.540 --> 00:05:22.639 that will be funny. It'll be funny if I'm a doctor 00:05:22.639 --> 00:05:24.319 who operates with a chainsaw. And it's not, right? 00:05:24.439 --> 00:05:26.459 It's just weird. As I describe it, I'm sure you're 00:05:26.459 --> 00:05:29.040 like, that's just weird. And it is weird. But... 00:05:30.269 --> 00:05:32.790 And weird, what I mean by weird is unrelatable. 00:05:33.610 --> 00:05:35.310 You would never look at that and laugh at it. 00:05:35.329 --> 00:05:38.310 Not in a way that connected with you, like a 00:05:38.310 --> 00:05:40.990 belly laugh. You might go, oh, that's weird and 00:05:40.990 --> 00:05:43.050 crazy. I don't know what that person's doing. 00:05:43.250 --> 00:05:46.069 You might laugh at it derisively, but not in 00:05:46.069 --> 00:05:50.569 agreement with what you're watching. But when 00:05:50.569 --> 00:05:54.550 you come to an improv class, let's say that you're 00:05:54.550 --> 00:05:57.730 like me. Okay, I'm a white middle -aged man. 00:05:57.769 --> 00:06:00.879 Well, I'm not middle -aged anymore. 56. So as 00:06:00.879 --> 00:06:03.300 a Clint Eastwood once said, I'm on the back though. 00:06:04.040 --> 00:06:10.259 Um, so, uh, and I have children and I have, uh, 00:06:10.500 --> 00:06:13.899 almost have very little experience working for 00:06:13.899 --> 00:06:15.980 other people. I've always been an entrepreneur, 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:19.079 I guess, or self -employed or a deadbeat, whatever 00:06:19.079 --> 00:06:22.139 acronym, an acronym, whatever label you want 00:06:22.139 --> 00:06:26.160 to stick on me. Um, but when I improvise, I can, 00:06:26.319 --> 00:06:29.740 I can, I can be a woman. I could be a mother 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:32.899 or I could be a childless adult or I could be 00:06:32.899 --> 00:06:35.420 married. I'm not married, but I could play that. 00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:39.120 Or I could play like I'm a boss. I'm an employee 00:06:39.120 --> 00:06:42.699 and I have a boss. And what that does is it allows 00:06:42.699 --> 00:06:45.920 me glimpses into the worlds of other people. 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.939 And what that does is it helps create an understanding 00:06:49.939 --> 00:06:53.819 of other people's journeys. And of course, it's 00:06:53.819 --> 00:06:59.139 an approximation of one. really understand the 00:06:59.139 --> 00:07:01.980 journey of another human being but some insight 00:07:01.980 --> 00:07:05.540 into it you know there's there's the three kinds 00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:07.699 of empathy and since we're talking about empathy 00:07:07.699 --> 00:07:10.259 i'll just run through them very quickly because 00:07:10.259 --> 00:07:13.540 they're interesting uh and i have all three of 00:07:13.540 --> 00:07:17.000 these and if you're an empath uh i'm sure you 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:22.360 do uh but of course we all have varying degrees 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:25.439 of these things anyway the first one is the first 00:07:25.439 --> 00:07:31.220 empathy is uh understanding what someone is feeling, 00:07:31.319 --> 00:07:34.839 like, oh, you're upset or you're angry or you're 00:07:34.839 --> 00:07:40.100 happy. The second one is hearing somebody's story 00:07:40.100 --> 00:07:44.319 and having an idea or an understanding in some 00:07:44.319 --> 00:07:48.500 way as to what that was like. And then the third 00:07:48.500 --> 00:07:53.439 one is when you hear somebody's problem, is you 00:07:53.439 --> 00:07:57.480 take it on yourself and help them. solid so uh 00:07:57.480 --> 00:08:01.100 the the way it's described to me that i like 00:08:01.100 --> 00:08:03.620 it makes it easier to understand is let's say 00:08:03.620 --> 00:08:05.639 you're walking down a road and you come across 00:08:05.639 --> 00:08:08.160 there's a big hole in the ground and there's 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:10.560 a person in the hole and you look down you see 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:13.720 the person first thing he's like oh they're scared 00:08:13.720 --> 00:08:18.379 or confused or whatever the second one is like 00:08:18.379 --> 00:08:21.360 oh you're in the hole oh that must be terrifying 00:08:21.850 --> 00:08:24.329 or discommodulating or whatever. That's the second 00:08:24.329 --> 00:08:25.930 one. And the third one is you jump down into 00:08:25.930 --> 00:08:28.029 the hole like, okay, your problem is now our 00:08:28.029 --> 00:08:30.529 problem. Let's get out of this hole. And of course, 00:08:30.550 --> 00:08:33.389 that's where empaths have some problems is taking 00:08:33.389 --> 00:08:36.230 on other people's problems and solving them for 00:08:36.230 --> 00:08:41.409 them in order to get liked. And sometimes that 00:08:41.409 --> 00:08:45.250 works out and often it does not. So that's the 00:08:45.250 --> 00:08:47.750 thing. But building empathy and understanding 00:08:47.750 --> 00:08:52.269 of other people's journey is... I think so important 00:08:52.269 --> 00:08:56.750 because without it, you know, we, we all just 00:08:56.750 --> 00:09:01.450 look at everybody else through our narrow experience, 00:09:01.750 --> 00:09:04.929 right? Like every time I hear that phrase, like, 00:09:04.990 --> 00:09:07.190 well, if I did it, anybody can do it. That's 00:09:07.190 --> 00:09:11.529 no, that's not at all true. Like you did it. 00:09:11.549 --> 00:09:13.649 That's great. But you don't know anybody else's 00:09:13.649 --> 00:09:16.570 journey. You don't know what they've had to go 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:20.139 through, you know? And so what improv does is 00:09:20.139 --> 00:09:23.279 it allows you to play a range of people and to 00:09:23.279 --> 00:09:25.759 really if you play it as smart as you get to 00:09:25.759 --> 00:09:28.639 the height of your intelligence, as I say, or 00:09:28.639 --> 00:09:31.440 as to be to honor that whatever you're paying 00:09:31.440 --> 00:09:36.139 as playing as much as possible, you will start 00:09:36.139 --> 00:09:38.799 to get an understanding of how other people live 00:09:38.799 --> 00:09:42.919 and exist. And, you know, there's this thing 00:09:42.919 --> 00:09:45.919 about our brains that if you. So wherever you're 00:09:45.919 --> 00:09:50.679 sitting right now, listening to this, if all 00:09:50.679 --> 00:09:55.759 of a sudden the door opened and all these puppies 00:09:55.759 --> 00:09:58.740 ran in and you played with them, that experience, 00:09:59.220 --> 00:10:02.019 whether that really happened to you or you imagined 00:10:02.019 --> 00:10:04.000 it, as far as your brain is concerned, is the 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:10.039 same. And so we manifest our reality. So you 00:10:10.039 --> 00:10:12.840 can sort of build different pathways in your 00:10:12.840 --> 00:10:15.320 brain. Brain plasticity, which is an episode 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:16.799 I'll be talking about at some point. Another 00:10:16.799 --> 00:10:20.399 benefit of improv, you know, generating new pathways 00:10:20.399 --> 00:10:24.740 in your brain, which, you know, is good for improv, 00:10:24.820 --> 00:10:27.480 but then that's also very good in a lot of other 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:32.019 places in your life. Practicing divergent and 00:10:32.019 --> 00:10:34.580 convergent thinking when trying to be creative 00:10:34.580 --> 00:10:38.850 or, and again, creative. It's good to be creative 00:10:38.850 --> 00:10:40.809 when you're on stage or when you're in a class, 00:10:40.830 --> 00:10:43.090 but it's also good to be creative at work or 00:10:43.090 --> 00:10:45.769 with your family or relationships. You want to 00:10:45.769 --> 00:10:49.809 think of other possibilities to solve problems. 00:10:51.029 --> 00:10:54.029 But today, what I really want to just emphasize 00:10:54.029 --> 00:11:00.629 is empathy, that you can develop more of an understanding 00:11:00.629 --> 00:11:04.269 of different people, which hopefully will allow 00:11:04.269 --> 00:11:07.070 you to suspend some judgment. about other people 00:11:07.070 --> 00:11:09.549 and going okay okay you know there might have 00:11:09.549 --> 00:11:11.789 been a time i'd look at such and such a thing 00:11:11.789 --> 00:11:14.590 a person to type whatever with a bit of like 00:11:14.590 --> 00:11:17.470 then i'll link that but okay all right all right 00:11:17.470 --> 00:11:22.330 i can uh can understand maybe why your journey 00:11:22.330 --> 00:11:25.289 has not been so easy or whatever but that's that's 00:11:25.289 --> 00:11:28.450 what i'm trying to get at is that you can start 00:11:28.450 --> 00:11:31.299 to think about other people Anyway, that's my 00:11:31.299 --> 00:11:34.360 time for today. Empathy is very important. Improv 00:11:34.360 --> 00:11:39.679 will help you develop it and make you more of 00:11:39.679 --> 00:11:42.899 a human being and not a human doing. I don't 00:11:42.899 --> 00:11:44.620 know what that means. But anyway, thanks so much, 00:11:44.620 --> 00:11:46.559 everybody. I hope you have a great week. We'll 00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:49.919 see you back here next time for more of the Socap 00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:52.679 Improv Comedy Podcast. This week brought to you 00:11:52.679 --> 00:11:55.460 by Burt Reynolds Butt Reynolds. So for all your 00:11:55.460 --> 00:11:57.639 Butt Reynolds needs, contact Burt Reynolds Butt 00:11:57.639 --> 00:12:00.559 Reynolds. Take care.