It is a new era, a new dawn, a new beginning, with a new font of improv wisdom in the form of Merry Mary Hynes, whom you’ve met, and in turn a fresh challenge for Mark to engage in philosophy tutoring with a brilliant but free-from-academic-philosophy-training partner.

Sponsor: Get 15% off at MasterClass.com/IMPROV.

We start off with some improv to explore the idea of being a co-host, then Mark attempts to relate a bit of Luce Irigaray (hear the full Partially Examined Life episode on her) and briefly attempts to argue that all our concern with representation (seeing YOURSELF on screen or whatnot) is dwarfed by the existential gulf between individuals. Mary discusses her non-binary identification through the medium of Doctor Who.

All this prompts another scene with us doing weird accents at the Feminist Café, Mark relating the history of his vocal training (including a brief clip of the actual recording of voice lessons from 1990), a scene about an aging child pop star, and discussion of how an audience relates to changes in what a performer does over time (like, say, when a podcast you like gets a new co-host…). Finally, what is philosophy, and have you been doing it already in some form throughout your life, even if you never took a class with that name?

In the post-game chat, we talk a bit about Last One Laughing, Alien Earth, and Sinners, and Mary refreshes us on short-form vs. long-term improv.

Thanks for being on this here Patreon page, where the action is always ad free! We appreciate your support.

The image used here reflects the new era. Instead of shamelessly stealing child’s drawings off the Internet, in Season Five here, I am getting up with the times and instead telling AI to create graphics in the style of children’s drawings and watching it fail miserably. In this case, the result looks like a beginner user of Corel Draw instead of a child using crayons, but this is what Claude AI delivered, and you can be sure that I am not putting child artists out of work by creating it this way. I ask you to contemplate the hair styles here, from the lefty’s jaunty beret-style hair to the righty’s yellow clam-shell style hat a la Dumb Donald from Fat Albert. Magnifique!

Hear more PvI. Support the podcast!

You can choose to watch this unedited on YouTube: