This is Philosophy versus Improv, where two sages try to teach each other a thing or two,

and maybe you, the audience, gets something out of it as well.

My name is Bill Arnett and Improv. I'm going to say expert. There we go. I'm going to own it, Mark.

I'm going to own it. It's been a long time, so I'm going to use the word, but simply a philosophy novice.

Well, I am Mark Linson-Myer. I can't say I'm a philosophy expert because the depth and the breadth of philosophy is so dramatic, so intense, that I think even someone who studied it for a lifetime would not call themselves an expert, much less someone who merely puts many hours

podcasting and studying related to it. So I'm going to say I'm a level 10. Let's say that.

How aggressively humble of you. And I've been doing this podcast for three some years now. So I'm

okay. I'm okay with the improv. Yeah. Let's introduce our guest, someone with a book,

who is not a philosopher.

Nor an improviser.

Your name being.

Identify yourself.

Oh, that's me.

That's my cue.

Yeah.

I'm Randy Pertell, and I've written a book, Winging It, Improves, Power, and Peril in the time of Trump. I also wrote a book, A Taste for Chaos,

the Art of Literary Improvisation. And yet you say you're not an improver? What does that mean?

So I like to start by saying that I bring an analytic approach, a literary background,

an analytic approach to improvisation, which I stumbled on in 1975.

Before improv was well known, it wasn't really on my radar.

I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I'm sure there were improv clubs in Boston, but I wasn't aware of them.

And I have taken one class, that is one series of

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