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[0:00] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm Ruthie Fierberg, and this is Why We Theater.

[0:05] Ruthie Fierberg: The podcast that digs into the onstage works we love to make the offstage change we need.

[0:12] Ruthie Fierberg: After all, that is why we theater.

[0:17] Ruthie Fierberg: Today we welcome performer Tendayi Kuumba to delve into DAVID Byrne's AMERICAN Utopia.

[0:24] Ruthie Fierberg: Tendai is one of the show's two vocalists and dancers alongside DAVID Byrne himself.

[0:30] Ruthie Fierberg: The show is currently playing Broadway's St. James Theater now through April 3rd, 2022.

[0:36] Ruthie Fierberg: Do yourself a favor and go see this show.

[0:42] Ruthie Fierberg: I've had the gift of seeing it live twice. Once in October of 2019 at Broadway's Hudson Theater long before the pandemic, and once in October 2022 in its new Broadway home.

[1:07] Ruthie Fierberg: At the time, I had to look up who he was before going to that carpet. All this to say I was not primed for any particular reaction to AMERICAN Utopia.

[1:17] Ruthie Fierberg: And yet, sitting in that audience and eventually standing, that music, it permeated my skin, and I felt like I was bathing in this experience.

[1:29] Ruthie Fierberg: You know how sometimes you watch a performer or listen to a speaker and think they're just on a totally different plane.

[1:40] Ruthie Fierberg: And the entire experience begins with a song called Here, where DAVID holds a model of a human brain in his hand and sings.

[1:48] Ruthie Fierberg: Here is a region of abundant detail. He is a region that is seldom used. And he is a region that continues living even when the other sections are removed.

[2:19] Ruthie Fierberg: It's literally a song about the anatomy of the brain. You should really hear DAVID, Tendai, and Chris Giarmo sing it, which you can do by listening to the AMERICAN Utopia album on Spotify or watching the capture of the whole show on HBO Max.

[2:34] Ruthie Fierberg: At first glance, AMERICAN Utopia seems like a concert, but it's not. And it's not exactly a play or a musical. It's something else outside the box of these labels.

[2:46] Ruthie Fierberg: The narrative DAVID weaves from song to song, both through the music and interstitial monologues, contemplates thought and how humans operate in the world around us.

[2:57] Ruthie Fierberg: And so I realized DAVID's song set along with Annie-B Parsons' unique and exacting choreography as performed by a band that is completely mobile, dancing all around the stage with their instruments, creates a show about exploring the unconventional.

[3:15] Ruthie Fierberg: As you know, this entire podcast is about finding solutions or the beginning of solutions to create change in the world. But so many of these issues feel overwhelming and unsolvable.

[3:28] Ruthie Fierberg: American UTOPIA made me wonder how many solutions might we be missing out on because we only think in a certain kind of way.

[3:38] Ruthie Fierberg: So I asked Tendai as well as experts Dr. Vinoo Alluri and Dr. Alejandro Lleras to join us as we ponder. What problems could we solve if we used more of our minds and used our minds differently? Could we achieve an AMERICAN Utopia?

[4:06] Ruthie Fierberg: I saw AMERICAN Utopia in its original Broadway home at the Hudson Theater in 2019. And a second time when it reopened in 2021 at the St. James Theater on Broadway, where for all of you out there, it is still currently playing through April 3rd.

[4:22] Ruthie Fierberg: And the show is really such an experience. It's a trip without the drugs. Both times I really felt as if the cells of my body changed. And both times I could not steal my eyes from Tendayi Kuumba.

[4:42] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. Welcome, Tendai.

[4:45] Tendayi Kuumba: Hello, hello. Happy to be here. Excuse my raspy morning voice.

[4:53] Ruthie Fierberg: That's all right. They do six shows a week. So we're just happy that you're joining us.

[4:59] Ruthie Fierberg: So if you haven't seen the show, when you get your tickets or when you watch it on HBO Max, because there is a capture courtesy of Spike Lee, Chris and Tendai are the vocalists and the dancers of the show alongside DAVID Byrne.

[5:14] Ruthie Fierberg: David Byrne's AMERICAN Utopia feels in part like a concert, but like I said, it's really an experience, and it does have a thread from beginning to end. So Tendai, I'm wondering for you what is the narrative or what is that thread through AMERICAN Utopia's beginning to end?

[5:35] Tendayi Kuumba: The thread. I think the thread means a lot to a lot of different people. To me, the thread that I've kind of latched on to is one that DAVID is he is himself, but he's also kind of also this representation of this entity of a person or a man using that using music to navigate these like thoughts in his head, these communities of people, um, like how the show opens up with more and more of the band starting to be introduced to the audience, adding more and more color in the lights, each song. Um, so I see it as kind of like this man or person finding their way, navigating through humanity and using music. I mean, you know, like a musical essentially, but using these thoughts and these questions to dissect humanity, society, how we fit in, what it even means to fit in and to society when we all look different, when we all have we all need to look different in order to thrive.

Um, how important that is, um, how important it is to connect the historical context behind how he got here, whether it's who he's worked with, or whether it's when Talking Heads got their record contract. These amazing things that you see as one thing, and how that can make you start to really dissect even more. So I think he's found a way to try to, with the monologues in between the song, which is very different from touring. When we were touring, it was just straight through. Right. More like a yeah, like more like a concert. So with the monologues in between, I feel like it's added maybe more information about him personally behind each song. And also if you want to take a broader look and step out and not even see DAVID as DAVID, but see him as just this entity using this music to communicate how he's dissecting parts of the world to get to um hell you at the end and us saying these names and that coming after burning down the house, and then one find it, you know, all of these things of this roller coaster that we all are going through. But I think he's found a way to organize certain songs where if we if you listen to it, you could find your own through line of storytelling.

[8:08] Ruthie Fierberg: Right. I mean, it's interesting on the AMERICAN Utopia website, there's a letter from DAVID kind of about the show. And I think it's important that what you say about, you know, when you guys were on tour, it was just a concert because some people will come to the Broadway show and think it's a concert, but those monologues really do change the nature of it. What he says in his letter is that you know, he was working on another show, the Color Guard show. That there wasn't a this is about this message. But once he got to the end of it, he realized that the guiding principle had been inclusion. And so it sounds like perhaps the guiding principle of AMERICAN Utopia is that growth of humanity. Like you said, you start out as small as possible with just him, add the two of you, continue to add band members, continue to add layers, continue to add colors until you get the breadth of humanity.

[9:05] Tendayi Kuumba: Yeah, and definitely like even starting with the questioning of the brain of humanity, you know, with him with him talking about the brain and not just brains of fully formed adults, but brains of babies, and just you know, yeah, using that to dissect humanity from the inside out. I was actually going to say, like the show literally begins with the human brain. He's holding a model of a human brain and going here is an area and pointing out pieces of the brain. As a performer in the show, does that prime you? Does that bring you to a certain beginning point? Is it important for you to get small in that way?

[9:47] Tendayi Kuumba: No, I feel like uh definitely not small. I think one DAVID has been so great to work with, and he is a rock and roll hall of famer, you know, could have any persona he chose. Um, but fortunate for us, he's super understanding, open, inclusive within energy and space on stage as well as offstage. So I feel like Chris and I consistently feel like the bookends of DAVID or of the show. And I think that when we enter, it doesn't feel like we have to enter small since we're the first two. It feels like we're entering to stage the space, open the space, introduce, we're already introducing two different dynamics of two different visuals of what human beings look like.

[10:40] Tendayi Kuumba: Right. As a black woman and as a queer white man. Um, so I think those things already like we're already cracking open your brain from the Yeah, that's really true. And you know, and it just happened to work out like that.

[10:55] Tendayi Kuumba: Yeah. So I think that it kind of feels like a duty, maybe more of like we are your guides. You know, we are guiding you through whether it's like you want to look at like a wrinkle in time or something, you know.

[11:07] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah, yeah.

[11:08] Tendayi Kuumba: So I think that's what it feels like. It kind of feels like because we're um standing behind the chain right before we come out.

[11:15] Ruthie Fierberg: Right.

[11:15] Tendayi Kuumba: And so we also have a moment to kind of like sit and be seen behind this chain and gather the energy before exploding out on stage. So I think it's more of a duty of like starting to hold down the space for everyone else that's gonna enter and um escorting the audience into our world.

[11:34] Ruthie Fierberg: I love that. So for those who haven't seen the show yet, this the stage is empty. It actually emphasizes the emptiness and the bodies are the only things that fill it.

[11:44] Ruthie Fierberg: And the three sides of the stage are lined with these like mesh, I don't even want to call it mesh. They're like strings of chain. And I actually I remember reading in DAVID's letter that at one point it was mesh because he kind of wanted it to be curtains, but then there was a worry that in outdoor arenas the curtains would blow. So maybe if it's mesh, then wind will go through it, but then that still didn't work. And what I found so interesting was that it was anything other than chain to begin with, because the chains themselves look to me a little bit like neurons, right? Like there are there are kinks in them that to me look kind of like synapses. And then the way you walk through them was like the fluid of the brain. I don't know. I was getting really deep into it, apparently.

[12:35] Tendayi Kuumba: I love that. My brain works a lot like that too. So I definitely wow. Yeah, I love that. Adams and neurons are all over the space. I mean, that is really, and that's what I thought in my first viewing of the show, too. Maybe not from the first number, but I definitely towards the end was like, oh, those are the synapses he's talking about. But you talk about being the guide, and after that first song, right before I know sometimes man is wrong, you and Chris actually physically manipulate DAVID's body as he's saying, Who am I? What do I want? How do I work this? Talk to me about just that image of humans moving other humans.

[13:15] Tendayi Kuumba: Yeah. Um, Annie B. Parsons, the choreographer, is the one that created that idea and had us maneuver and figure out, you know, the best mechanics. I mean, I just see it as just the puppetry of life, you know. Um, where it's already like, you know, him being his own man on stage, or is he, you know, that kind of questioning that can happen and him asking real questions like what we think every day through social media, through everything. I'm like, what's that? What are they doing? Should I be doing that? Should I go talk to them? No, I don't want to do that, you know. Right. So I think it's a now that I think about it, it kind of seems like a moment where we're demonstrating the puppetry of how those thoughts can kind of like seeing you into a loop, and then he breaks away from us and we break away from him, where it's like, fuck that.

No, yeah. I'm in my, I gotta figure this out on my own. Oh my gosh. I'm so obsessed. You mentioned Annie B, Annie B. Parsons, whose choreography is incredible in this. It is so specific. It's so particular to each song and to the individuated beats and notes of each song. It's not the kind of movement that can just be transposed onto another song and slowed down or sped up. Like it is to the song it is set to. And I'm curious if you can maybe pick one number or one phrase, even about how that choreography was devised and set on you and the feeling of performing it.

[14:47] Tendayi Kuumba: I mean, it's so shape focused too. I think that's why it looks so different. And there's a lot of hand movement when usually in other choreography, your hands are the extension of a body movement. And here it's like, no, your hands are the movement. I'm just so curious about all of that. I've loved working with Annie B. Uh coming into AMERICAN Utopia. I was previously dancing with a dance company called Urban Bushwomen. And there's a lot of big movement rolling around the floor, flying across the stage. And so I remember when I first started doing choreography, I just naturally had a lot of just force behind my movement from a different momentum. And I remember when I saw the choreography, or I think maybe even someone said to me, like, oh, this should be a piece of cake compared to what you've been doing.

You know, and I think it's very interesting when we dissect choreography and what is or is not difficult and how we level that because there are moments where the movement is so uh intricate. Like uh definitely slippery people is definitely one I would think of, or Chris and I have our duet moment on stage right. The hand placements are very specific and very small, even when we've been in arenas, you know, and her being very clear with us of like you know, intentionally bringing them to you instead of having to explode and burst out on stage, and that took a lot of power too of when you're singing these big songs and you run around stage and then you get really small, and you have to be very clear and very specific in how in sync can we be with each other within that energy that's already you know, adrenaline pumping, and so it's been a really uh beautiful way of navigating different momentum through movement um and not taking anything for granted.

She's given space and freedom where we're able to add our own of ourselves to it as well, but being very clear on pelvic facings, uh whether it's downstage or upstage, and our fingers, our wrists, even if the head is slightly tilted, or to not tilt the head at all. Um realize how much it reads. That's right. Because of us all being in this monochrome grade, because of us all being in these different organized ways of being on stage that the littlest thing can either add to the pot or just tweak it off a little bit, and so it's been really nice to have such a huge show and energy and space, but also this really intricate, intimate moments to have to continuously pay attention to so we don't lose track of detail and feel like you have to go big in order to express that.

[17:38] Ruthie Fierberg: I was going to say it almost sounds like the equivalent of when you whisper on stage to get people to lean in rather than broadcasting out to them. Before we bring in our experts, I'm just curious in general, because as I expressed it at the beginning of our conversation, I felt like my body cells changed. And I got up and danced both times. It's impossible to me to sit in that theater and hear that music and watch the music happen and watch the dance happen without doing it yourself. So I'm curious how it feels in your body during a performance and right after the performance.

[18:20] Tendayi Kuumba: Well, right after the performance, I have six flights of stairs to go to my dressing room. That's right. Hashtag Broadway. Yes, the adrenaline is pumping. Within the performance, I feel like just thinking of so many things at the same time vocally, because sometimes we're moving around on stage so much. I realize sometimes people don't realize how much vocally Chris and I are singing. I mean, we are DAVID's background vocalists, so all the harmonies you're hearing on every song is is us. So within the show, it's definitely just thinking of all of the layers, you know, the musical layers, the movement layers, the spatial awareness layers, because all the musicians are wireless on stage, but they have these few heart these huge harnesses and their instruments, you know, running around the stage with us.

Right. There are moments where I find myself very connected to something lyrically, or I use moments to reset. Like definitely a miracle when we're in our circle. That's kind of a moment to reset and really take in some of these awkward lyrics that dare that DAVID um starts to sing. Also, just maybe a little bit of crowd watching. We used to have moments of really dissecting the difference between audiences on tour compared to in Broadway.

[19:39] Ruthie Fierberg: Oh, that's fascinating.

[19:41] Tendayi Kuumba: It's very fascinating, especially when you know people are coming on tour, they're on tour, they're ready for a rock concert. You know, they're coming to Broadway, they're digesting and taking it in. Um, which we've had to understand. It doesn't mean they don't like it. They're just taking it in. Right, right. That genuine interaction and really start to starting to appreciate not just how we're receiving it on stage, because we do it every night, but how different people are receiving it off stage.

[20:10] Ruthie Fierberg: Right. Well, and what's also cool is that you and Chris seem because the band is untethered and because you're vocalists, it also seems like everyone is a part of a single band rather than band singers. It's a very cool thing. If you are not intrigued to watch this show after hearing Tendai, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe Vinu and Alejandro, as they come on, will help even more. So let's welcome them in. I want to welcome our experts who are here today. We have people from all over the world. So I'd like to introduce Dr. Vinu Alluri, who is a musicologist and neuroscientist specializing in music cognition. She's an assistant professor at the cognitive science lab in Hyderabad, India. In addition to being a musician herself, Vinu is currently conducting research on music and social media, music, the brain, and enculturation, the cognitive neuroscience of music, as well as music and depression. We're so excited to have you.

[21:09] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Thank you so much, Ruth. It's an absolute pleasure. I mean, I am just in awe of what Tendai has been talking about, and it's just such such a joy just to listen to all of this. It's going to get even more exciting, I hope. Our second guest is Alejandro Lleras, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He's also the assistant head for diversity and inclusion. His research focuses on the psychology of awareness and attention. And he has studied embodied cognition, which is going to be really interesting as we get more into the dance piece of this. He is also a co-founder of the Spark Society, which aims to establish a society of cognitive scientists of color as well as mentor junior psychologists of color. Welcome, Alejandro.

[21:53] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Hi, Ruthie. Thank you for having me. So excited.

[21:56] Ruthie Fierberg: So just to let you all know out there, as a production, AMERICAN Utopia is very civically engaged. So there are partnerships with Headcount to register voters at every show, or the performance towards the end of the show called Hell You Talmbout, which is a song by Janelle Monáe, which we will dig into a little later. But AMERICAN Utopia is not about one single issue. So watching this show, I knew I had to talk about it, but it was like, what do we talk about it? And what struck me in my second viewing was the reaction of the people in the audience and this reaction of my own body that I've been talking about because there's this freedom and this free flow of energy that seems to occur because of the music and dance.

And I was thinking about this openness and this shift in myself. And upon reflection, I realized that DAVID, as Tendai said, is leading us in an exploration of humanity, but within that, at least the guiding thread that I saw was this exploration through different modes of thought. So it got me wondering rather than steps to take towards addressing one single issue or attempting to move towards a solution of one single problem. What if we investigated how to improve problem solving itself? What problems might we be able to solve or attempt to solve, really, if we used our minds differently? And so that's how we ended up with a neuroscientist and a psychologist with us here today, specializing in musicology and movement.

So I want to start from the basics. Vinu, what happens to the human brain in general? What pieces get activated when we hear music as opposed to when we're just sitting around or you're hearing my voice speak on this podcast?

[23:57] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Right. So well, let me let me start by giving you an example of what actually happens, right? So you're let's say that you're listening to uh maybe a techno piece of music, right? Right? Explain somewhere, and what sort of hits your eardrum or your ears basically is just changes in sound pressure, right? And what happens is that all of the sounds are sort of getting mixed up, and then what your brain does is to try and separate them into their respective parts. So it tries to pick out the particular instrument or maybe the singer, and then it tries to put all of these things together in time, so there is this sort of temporal integration going on, and then you start to make sense of it, and then once you start to make sense of it, and then you uh have to relate it to what you already know.

So, so how I heard this before? Is this from my uh culture? You start to retrieve these uh templates or make sense of it, and then after all of that comes the emotional response to it, right? Because you start to make these predictions about what is to come because you know there are certain universals in music as well, like rhythm, like you start to predict, okay.

[25:05] Dr. Vinu Alluri: So, this this is a regular beat that I hear, and something has to come, and then when it deviates from what you're trying to predict, then there's an element of surprise, and you might like it, might not like it. So, this is like an entirely active process that's going on in your brain, and you don't realize right? It you don't realize it at all. Clearly, because my mind is being blown right now, just as you're talking about everything that has to go on. So, so it's a full exercise for the brain, and so just in in terms of areas of the brain, since that is where AMERICAN Utopia begins. Is music activating or I should say integrating all sections of the brain? Is it the frontal lobe and the cerebellum and the temporal? Like, do we get all of the regions involved in music listening?

[25:52] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Yes, I would say that there's a lot of integration happening because you are uh not only uh sensing things at a very primary level, so it's not just your auditory areas, but then you have to start putting this information together, so you recruit your frontal areas, which is more about you know planning, decision making, and you know, these higher cognitive functions, and then you have the emotional response, so you have those reward-based, you know, limbic uh emotional areas in the brain. So, and then the there's so many more areas, so I can't really pinpoint saying it's area A, B, C, but it's like an entire symphony.

[26:27] Ruthie Fierberg: That's amazing. And does it make a difference what kind of music you're listening to in terms of genre, as to either like how lit up the brain is, or or like how hard it's working? Like, does it have to work harder with classical music or like you're saying with techno, or does the amount of lyrics impact the amount of work the brain is doing?

[26:52] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Oh, absolutely. There's a lot to do with the complexity in music and complexity in various uh aspects of music. It can be lyrically complex or it can be harmonically complex, tonally complex. So there's uh there's definitely uh this what we call an inverted you. So if it's too simple, then your brain doesn't really need to work hard at all, right? Because you know what's coming. But if it's extremely complex, let's say that we talk about improvisational jazz, so you know it's extremely difficult to follow, and maybe it's the musicians that are enjoying the most, and we just sit here and wondering, okay, so what's what's really good? So I think there's a lot uh of you know, individual experiences and differences that come into play when determining what is complex and what is not, and definitely certain genres have their own complexity levels. So if it's too complex, maybe your brain sort of turns off and you're not processing it as much, right? So there's that's why I call that an inverted you. So you always have the sweet spot.

[27:53] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder, and the answer is probably we don't know, but I'm gonna ask the question anyway. Could it be that there's something about the specific music in AMERICAN Utopia that opens our minds or activates our minds in a certain way? The instrumentation is really different from most shows, at least in in the US, I would say, and this is a US audience coming to Broadway. So is it possible that the instrumentation does something different to us or the number of voices does something different to us? How are all of those things interacting? Cause I'm l I'm searching for an answer that I'm sure can't be found, but about like why AMERICAN Utopia, the show, like I said, like why it felt so different from any other musical experience I've had.

[28:47] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: So, well, it's a pity that I wasn't able to watch it, but from whatever I have seen on the internet about it, and then I realized that it's something extremely novel, something that people have never really seen before. And then there is and they're walking around. And I think it's this novelty also which sort of uh draws people into it, right? Because there is something new to process. So you can't just stick to your old ways of thinking. So you do have to open up your mind somehow. So you do have to make some hopefully new connections, right? So something should happen when it's novel, and that's how we learn, and that's how we we try to decipher complexities in life, right? So maybe initially it's so new and complex, but you're trying to navigate through all of that, and that's probably why you feel something new because you never experience anything like that.

[29:40] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: No, uh I think um Pervina's saying is entirely right. And in addition to that, um, music also has a lot of differences in terms of the the grooviness, the actual word that people study in psychology is how groovy the music is, and that for example, um determines intuitively how much your body is responding to the music, right? So there's music that is naturally groovy, and there's music that is not as groovy, and and you know, because when you listen to some music, you start moving, uh tapping, following the rhythm involuntarily, even right. So if you add to this, you being in a group, being in an audience, seeing this, feeling the groove of the music, and then the layer of the emotional complexity that Vino was talking about that becomes shared, right?

So now you have everybody's grooving, literally, and at the same time, and one of the brilliant pieces about the construction uh of the set and everything is that it's so minimalistic that from an attention point of view, it really draws you, it really draws you to what's happening in the stage, and and you don't you you don't think about anything else. There's nothing else, there's nothing to like uh distract you at all, right? You just focus, and everybody's focused. So you have this element of uh emotionality, uh groove, uh vision and attention, everything is just everybody just becomes like very refocused and and join in sharing this experience.

[31:19] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: So it's uh that's why I think that that's why you are you I think you you you're relating to the fact that we seem to be connected, and in this this show does that very well, and I think that one of the things that Tendai was mentioning too is that there because it's so inclusive. There's there's um all these different instruments, different people. You you feel like you could be there, that everybody can be there. It's that really nice uh sort of atmosphere.

[31:47] Ruthie Fierberg: Right, right. That you and the people on stage, the connection is that much closer because you can visualize it, you can see it, it's almost interchangeable as to who's on stage and who's in the audience. Although the people on stage are clearly far more talented.

[32:03] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Alejandro, I'm wondering if you could drill down a little bit more into what makes a piece of music more or less groovy.

[32:12] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: So syncopation in music, the sort of like sudden change of a beat is one of the things that is the most predictive. Um so when you think about salsa, our music like that has highly syncopated. It feels like whenever it's on, you're like bobbing your head or tapping with your foot. So that's one of the aspects, one of the principal aspect. I'm not the music expert here, so maybe wants to say something else.

[32:39] Dr. Vinu Alluri: No, no, I I think I think you just nailed it because that's what it is about, right? Because you use your bodies to sort of make sense of the rhythm. So that's what embodied cognition is in a way, right? You try to make sense of the information that's coming to you by using your body as a vehicle to do so. Right. Syncopation requires some additional processing, other you know, mental paper regular biddings. And that's what causes this sort of uh sense to move.

[33:04] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm even okay. So I'm gonna go really meadow right now because I'm nodding along as you're saying these things because it makes so much sense, which in and of itself is embodied cognition, right? It's my body processing what you're saying, and I'm agreeing along, and I'm for the first time, I'm wondering, this is so wild. Is the reason that we nod in agreement up and down and shake head no across because like agreement up and down is in alignment with our spine? Does that have anything to do with it? Alejandro, you're shaking your head. You're like, nope, you're making things up now. Please educate me.

[33:47] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: No, it's that's actually extremely culturally determined. Like oh. The the I think it's in Cyprus, for example, that people say no by tilting the head up and not down. So so you you can imagine different societies might mark the yes and no differently. But there is uh irrespective of that, there is this sort of uh aspect of movement that is shared across cultures. We do want to express, communicate, particularly when it's not our talk to our time to talk, we communicate with body movements, we engage people by this sort of feedback that uh our body is producing. And it's also like Dino Sain, it's also a part of helping us how to think, how to process information. Um we use our body to help us think.

[34:44] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm thinking about being in that audience and how even when your movements on stage might be small, might be precise, the movement that happens in the audience a lot of time is really exuberant. It honestly, to me, the best comparison is that it looks like children on a playground where the energy is just like everywhere and there's flailing, and people are. I mean, let me just say, I'm just gonna say it, but like the whitest people I ever saw who I would never think would move to anything, are up and dancing out of their bodies. It is wild. Like, what's that like to see from the stage?

[35:28] Tendayi Kuumba: Um, I mean, I I love it. I love it. It's almost like some moments I feel like I'm watching uh like an episode of Seinfield. You know, and uh when she's going in in the party. Yes. Um, it's just this uncontrol. I think part of it too is because of it being this Broadway theater. I think that people are really holding themselves back because they don't know if they can dance. They don't know if they can get up and dance, or they don't know how big, or they're trying to be aware of the people around them. Well, maybe some are, some just don't care. But yeah, I think that that's what I it's great to see people discover that they can get up and dance, and then no one's gonna tell them to sit down. And that's where I see like children on a playground of like, can I can I do this? Is this okay? Because I'm feeling something in my bones that I gotta let out.

[36:26] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah, it's that lack of inhibition, I think. Because it's also not just like, you know, sometimes people are dancing at a wedding, they're a little like they're on a dance, or they're like, all right, I know some people are looking at me, right? But this is like, you know, you're in a theater, you know there are people around you, and yet there is just not a care in the world. Like I said, it's that freeing feeling that I really love to see. And DAVID has such an amazing fan base that I think they feel that they're dancing with him because he just lets loose whenever he feels too without inhibition. So I think it gives that permission to uh let them feel comfortable in their own skin too.

[37:03] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Yeah. I'm curious what happens to our brains when we move to music, like planned movement, choreographed movement, like Tendai is doing, versus improvise and flow of movement like the audience might be doing.

[37:18] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Yeah, actually, um so they it will engage different parts of the brain, right. So when you are going through this rehearsed learned movement, you are constantly retrieving your planned movements, thinking about coordination, and on top of that, they are also singing, they're doing all sorts of things on stage at the same time.

[37:40] Dr. Vinu Alluri: They have to watch each other, not just dance freely. Uh, so it's an extremely consuming task. I cannot begin to imagine how exhausting it must be to actually go through the whole set. I was exhausted for them while I was watching it because they're on all the time, they're singing, they're moving, they're avoiding obstacles which are each other, in synchrony, etc. So this is an extremely intensive executive control task. You're like your brain is fully engaged, whereas when you're in the audience, you basically are just following you're in sort of this movement music compatibility stage. One of the advantages of being in this sort of situation is that you know that nobody's watching you, everybody's watching the stage, so it's very freeing in that way because it's not like the example of the wedding that you were giving a second ago, where you're like, Oh, people are looking at me.

Maybe I should move better, or maybe I should not repeat my moves, you know, like that it's not at all what's happening. You know, everybody is looking above your head and into the stage. So there's this very freeing and shared experience that allows you to just flow. Just flow. You're just going with the music, enjoying, and riding the wave. So your brain is in a more reactive as opposed to controlling mode of processing.

[39:09] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: That makes a lot of sense to integrate what you said before. It sounds like a lot of the intangible magic of this show. And again, this is speculation and conjecture. This is not fact, but it sounds to me like part of the power of the show lies in the attention, the lack of distraction, and the focus, just as much as it is about the type of music or the story that DAVID is sharing, it's the conditions surrounding it as well. Just in general, that humans only use 10% of our brains. This is said over and over until I honestly was researching for this podcast. I thought it was true because it's said so many times. Until I started reading and listening to some videos and going, oh yeah, of course that can't be true.

Because as one neuroscientist said, if we only use 10% of our brains, that would mean that a brain tumor, you know, 90% of the time, you'd be fine, right? It wouldn't matter because you're only using 10% of your brain. And I thought about that. I was like, oh my gosh, I feel so silly right now. But I'm curious, where did that myth come from? And also, are we using our brains to a maximal potential? Or is there research that indicates that there could be more? Vinu, I'll start with you.

[40:49] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Well, I honestly don't know where it came from because I just never agree with that, I suppose. And maybe movies have made it extremely popular, and then it's easy to latch on to. I think in terms of using your, you know, the capabilities of your brain more. This is not my main area of research, but I can only sort of hypothesize at this point. Sure. As we grow and we form these connections, right? From baby to sort of grow, and we start to get more and more conditioned, and we have these more conditioned responses. And then I suppose we start to, you know, we sort of sort of start to narrow down in terms of how we look at the world. But I think that any experience which probably allows you to, for example, this show is one such example that you would probably do something you could never do.

Like get up and you know, dance, and maybe this sort of experiencing something completely new and lowering of this inhibition, right? So this sort of self-awareness and inhibiting your own responses and sort of allowing, to put it in a very general way, to allow the energy in the brain to flow, then I suppose you are able to to some extent access something more than what you never thought you would be able to. Now, this doesn't sound extremely science-y, but again, you know, I can only sort of guess saying that yes, I guess to be open to novel experiences, and that's where creativity and you know exploration comes in, and that's probably when new neural connections begin to form.

[42:27] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Again, speculating, but logically it would follow to me. I mean, DAVID talks on stage about the plasticity of the brain, the adaptation of the brain. He says to the audience, I read that babies' brains have hundreds of millions more neural connections than we do as adults. It's said that as we grow, we eliminate many of those connections. I wondered what does this mean? Does this mean that babies are actually smarter than we are? Do we get stupider and stupider as we grow up until we reach a plateau of stupidity? And of course, he's joking before he explains Vinu what you just kind of alluded to, which is the pruning of the brain, that we give more energy to the connections that are commonly used and use it or lose it in the other sense.

I think it's very AMERICAN, if not very human, to think that more is better. And so I'm curious, maybe we don't want all the hundreds of millions of connections that we're born with to stay active. But in theory, would a greater number of connections be useful? Alejandro, I see you you look on the verge of saying something.

[43:41] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Going back to your question of where does this myth come from? And I think there was some evidence that it was just an advert appear in advertisements in the 19th century. And I think it latched onto people's imagination because I think that one of the things that is that we witness every day and that we desire every day is self-improvement, right? We see we can see experts perform amazing feats all the time. So we think, well, you know, maybe I can grow, maybe I can be that, maybe, and so it's it's just only a leap of a very small leap of imagination to think they must be using their brain more or something along those lines, right? And even going to like the magical realm of wanting to have superpowers or mysticisms of energies flowing and everything, I think that it also comes from this desire of wanting to be more and wanting wanting to exert more control over the world.

So I think it's the natural very natural idea to latch on to. I don't think that is true at all, like you were mentioning. Research shows everyone just to bust it all open, we use more than 10% of our brains. Humans do not only use 10% of their brains. Yeah, we use all our brain. Um, so in terms of whether more new more connections would be better, it's interesting to understand what connections are doing in the first place and why sometimes they prunes and why sometimes um it's good that there is pruning, but the reason why it's not silly to say that babies are smarter is because what they have is an ability to learn much greater than an adult, and so if you think about the miracle of language, when a child is learning language, it's just incredible how this develops.

They go one word one week, maybe a word two weeks later, and then in a couple of weeks, they're they're putting small sentences together, and then all of a sudden they're doing this very complex high-level thinking and constructing sentences very, very complicated. If I ask you to do the same, go to uh I don't know, Thailand and learn Thai, it will take you much longer than a toddler to speak any language, right? Right. So in that sense, babies are smarter because they have the capacity to learn more. So what all those connections are in the brain are are possibilities, are possibilities for learning, are possibilities for learning to distinguish different sounds. Just like different babies in that are learning different languages become sensitive to different sounds, right?

So they have the capacity to learn and become experts at distinguishing different vocal sounds, different consonant sounds that are important for their language, not for your language, right? So in that sense, having more is good. If then you're gonna follow up with a lot of pruning to try to specialize, it gives you the opportunity to learn. So in that sense, it's true. Now, in the sense when we think about what is smart, if we think of being smart as being able to solve a problem, well, having done a lot of pruning, having solved a lot of efficiencies in processing, yeah, being older and wiser, yeah, that's what we call being older and wiser.

[47:13] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Oh man, that's an incredible explanation. And I I think conceiving it as possibility, that's the right way to conceptualize this, or that's that's at least the most inspiring way to conceptualize it for me. There is research from a scientist named Brit Bogard out of the University of Miami, where she was talking about certain abilities like counting cards or synesthesia, which is when you associate one sense with another sense, and how those are actually cultivatable skills. You're not just born hearing the note C on a piano and seeing the color green, that that's actually something you can acquire. Is that true to your mind that we can acquire these skills? And what might the benefits of connecting different sensory experiences or different experiences in general? What might be the benefit of that? And I open this to whomever has a thought.

[48:18] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Yeah, so I think synesthesia, of course, are two aspects to it. One is that it's sort of hereditary that some people do have, you know, it runs in families, but then the kind of synesthesia that goes around from one generation to another might be different, right? They might have sound and color, and the other one might have color and something else, right? So there is that aspect, but I think that there is research, like you said, that does show that it you can cultivate that. But you can think about it, right? We we make sense by uh we are all in sort of synesthets in one sense, right? So when I say green, right? The sound and the word and the color, or you put them all together. So we we that's how we learn by association. So it's not such a it's not such an alien concept for the brain, right? So it's in that sense it's not uh, you know, you could cultivate it, but I did come across a very interesting experience that I would like to share.

[49:14] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Yes, please. So this is a set of uh schools in India or smaller education centers or learning centers for children, where I mean, this was my first time experience, and as a person of science, I do question many things, but I'm open to other possibilities where science cannot explain things. But so I was dumbfounded when I saw this girl, she must have been 11 years old, and they had blindfolded her because she does go to the school where they teach many different things, which allows them to actually create these sorts of connections. So I I'm I was as surprised as you. That was my reaction. So she was blindfolded. Now there's no tricks, right? This is like a friend's daughter, so there was no need to play any tricks. So she was blindfolded, and we we gave her something new that she'd never seen. So my husband's uh driver's license, and all she did was just run her finger across that, and of course, there are no bumps, it was well laminated.

[50:13] Tendayi Kuumba: You can't feel anything. I mean, we cannot, maybe they I don't know, but so she literally was able to identify the alphabets and it made no sense to me. So there was touch, and I honestly I don't know. And I asked her what I was gonna say, so you need to look at my open mouth jaw on the floor right now, exactly, exactly. So I was filled with all sorts of you know emotions, adrenaline, uh all sorts of things, wondering what happened. So I asked her, so when you did touch, I asked her what came to mind, right? What images came to mind? She said, Well, if there was a banana, and then there was something else, and it made much sense because I was wondering. So, what do you mean a banana? And then, of course, you look up, and there is this sort of synesthesia called lexical gestatory, right?

So you do associate um language and words or maybe even alphabets with uh things that you probably eat or smell or taste. But of course she was blindfolded. Alejandro mentioned superpowers and things like that. To me, she's not flying, but that sounds like a superpower, right? And so that's where perhaps the jargon around quote unquote, if we unlock our brains, we'll have superpowers. It's things like that. Just one more thing I wanted to add. I asked them, what is it that you do in that learning center? Because that's that's that's what I want to know. And she told me that uh she just briefly told me they do different kinds of movements which are more complex, which allows them to maybe engage uh certain, you know, maybe engage your brain a little more.

Like, for example, you do something with your left hand and something else with your right hand, which a dancer or a musician would do, right? It's it's natural to do that. So these kinds of things which are a bit more complex than what we experience in our everyday life. So that was just one thing which you know, I then I thought, okay, maybe being a dancer and a musician, maybe that that's you know, your gateway too. Right. Unleashing some potential in your brain without your knowledge. Well, maybe that there's something to do with the bilateral nature of that. I do know that there's lateralization in terms of verification versus prediction. So there's a side of your brain who's uh more trying to predict what's gonna happen, and another one is a little bit more busy trying to confirm and understand.

And because these are things that you want to be happening always concurrently. When you're listening to the sentence that I am producing right now, your brain is busy trying to predict the next word because he can't predict the next word, it means that he's following along, but he's also trying to make sure that he's understanding and really internalizing the concepts that I'm trying to convey. So it I wonder, I imagine I don't I don't know this for a fact. I haven't looked into it, but it wouldn't be surprising if the creativity part was more like sort of like in the prediction part of the brain. Sure. And speaking about language and and predictability, I mentioned the song I Zimbra, which the lyrics come from Dada is poetry.

So for those of you who don't know, DAVID brings Dadaism into the show, and according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, Dadaism is a movement in art and literature based on deliberate irrationality and negation of traditional artistic values, which basically means it's nonsense and breaking all the rules. Right? Like that's dataist. We didn't know that Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke were teaching us dataism, but that is it's it's nonsense syllables, that it doesn't really mean anything. And as DAVID said in the show, these artists are using nonsense to try to make sense of a world that didn't make sense. Their artistic aims were to remind the world that there are people of independent minds beyond war and nationalism who live for different ideals, which certainly sounds like something we can use at this moment.

So, Tendai, I want to ask you first before I ask our experts, what was it like to learn this song, particularly the lyrics, because you can't predict a story or a phrasing that it's telling. They're kind of these nonsense syllables.

[54:41] Tendayi Kuumba: Yeah. Um, well, uh, first learning it, I was like, am I learning this right? Is this the right word? And it's interesting because uh the talking heads fan base also tries to like unpack what this means. So there are various chat groups on like all over the interwebs of people trying to dissect where it comes from. Is it Latin? Is it Spanish? Is it a foreign language? Just hearing how he talks about Hugo Ball and the writings of that specific Dada poem. I don't think I've I don't know if I've really dissected it too too much. When I was a kid, I made up like my own private language. So I kind of think I see it as one of those things of like we're all in a club together, but we all know this language.

Come with us, let's open the world together. Yes. So I think maybe I've been trying to adapting it like that. It's also a moment where we have a pretty hefty movement area. So I think I'm trying to just embody the craziness of what it is to make sense out of nonsense in this world.

[55:49] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: So Vinu and Alejandro, I'll ask you from a more scientific space: do we know anything about listening to nonsense syllables or dataist poetry or music? Alejandro, let's start with you. Before going into that, I do want to point out that what one of the things that is that was really amazing to me when watching this particular piece was the reflection that it reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in Colombia, Spanish was the language, right? Which means that every English pop song that I liked and danced to was data to me. Because I did not understand English. And this is what happens to every person in the planet that it doesn't speak English when they listen to, I don't know, uh Taylor Swift or the brothers.

Ah, such a good point. I I thought it was a brilliant way, in a way, to convey that feeling because one of the things that it does is it really brings us together in terms of the shared emotional experience of the music alone, right? You don't need to understand the lyrics. In fact, there's a lot of songs that you might learn and love and not really truly understand the lyrics, or have them completely wrong in your head. You learn them wrong when you were you actually heard the wrong words and they stuck with you in your brain. And that doesn't change your love or appreciation for that song, right? So I think the fact that it's done in in in song is very powerful. I don't know that I would have read the whole poem, right?

If I had just the poem in front of me, I would have been like, okay, I can read three lines of this, it keeps on going with nonsense. I am not gonna put my brain through this. But you add the music and becomes this magical moment where everybody is all of a sudden sharing and the musicality of the words, and there is rhythm to the words, and they do repeat somehow. Uh, and they do have a uh uh poetry in the in in the way they rhyme together. So it it's it's finding all those nuances, even without any semantic knowledge to guide us that makes it extremely extremely likable. And you know, you're like a little detective. Oh, now they're gonna say I don't I can't say the words because I don't remember, but I think this is the part where they're gonna think blah blah blah, and they it works. You're like, oh yeah, I know, and then it goes to another one, and it's really it's really like a very learning and exploratory and emotional way of experiencing uh that song.

[58:26] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Yeah, Vino, if you want to add, yeah. Just I just want to add one thing when we want to define music, right? Being in the field, we never think of defining music at all. But uh, you know, they're in music there would be some identifiable patterns, and that's what you know, the sort of uh layering of such lyrics over some pattern is what makes it more enjoyable. Of course, the pattern depends on the kind of uh you know, music, whether you like that or not, but I guess when there is that pattern, it makes a lot more sense because as children, as babies, it's it's just that is a modern around, right? Because you you don't get it. There's so many languages, sounds object, everything, nothing makes sense. You have to learn to do that. So I think it's just natural that we we long to make sense of those things in some way or the other. Yes, music helps in doing so, then so be it, and that's that's magical, right?

[59:21] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Yes, I was going to say the words are nonsense, but the music has those intense patterns, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to follow it at all. I wanted to ask you, Tendai about Hell You Tell them about because it comes at the very end of the show, which is also just indicative of like you have to get the audience to that place, I think. For those who don't know, it's a protest song by Janelle Monet, where you recite the names of those specifically black people who have been killed by police here in the United States. And there is something about saying the names, there is something about repeating the names, there's something about doing it to a beat. And Tendai, I'm just wondering about again your personal experience doing that song and and how it resonates for you and what you have to manage doing that song.

[1:00:20] Tendayi Kuumba: Well, how you talking about it has very many layers. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, so uh how you talking about is like a vernacular slang of just natural culturally of people I've grown up around when something's crazy, and instead of like the hell you talking about, you know, how you talking about in Janelle Monet bringing that into creating the song in general has been extremely impactful. And the fact that it's in that vernacular is very specific to the African-American community. And then we're on top of that. Honestly, I joined uh the Tour of AMERICAN Utopia two months into its world tour and took the position of someone to better hold down the music and the movement within the show. And so I had to watch the entire show before I agreed to it.

And uh saying how you actually is what added to me agreeing to do the entire production at all. I value DAVID and his lifelong legacy of music, which is, you know, amazing itself, and the opportunity to be a part of this was amazing in itself and a little unbelievable at the same time. And seeing that he is not only aware of his social status, his status as a white man in the world, but it's also using that within what was a world tour to bring that song into the set list is what made me agree to say yes to join the show. I come from a lot of communities of movers and creators of color that deal with art activism, you know, art not just being for art's sake at all times, but also being clever that it has connection and um pays homage to the communities that we come from, as well as a lot of understanding and undoing racism within our art making and art creating processes.

And so knowing that I'm leaving some of those environments to join that tour was something that I had to be very clear on, knowing that when I jump into this big pond of DAVID Byrne, AMERICAN Utopia, talking heads, um, that with that I'm still carrying a lot with me within my community, my people. I think I heard someone speak earlier about just the representation on stage and how you know it looks like you could be up there.

[1:02:39] Tendayi Kuumba: And some of the most amazing moments are where we have not just all able bodies, you know, of different able bodies and different spaces, but also seeing young children of color and their parents bringing them to that stage and knowing that I've been that child. And just the mere fact of seeing a woman that looked like me on stage just opened that just inkling more possibility. But also being clear that that possibility doesn't take away the reality of the world that we live in. As artists, I think it's our responsibility to hold people accountable because we're holding ourselves accountable, and we're not just calling you out because I want you to feel bad and say a name. I'm calling you out because these are names of people that we would not have known their names had they not have been in this situation.

And so it's important to speak upon their names because it also brings forth the stories as to how we lost them in our society and how their lives were taken by these entities that are set up in place to protect us, essentially, that are set up in place to hold sacred community, and there's a glitch in the system, and we have to continue to name those. One thing that I appreciate is that even when we were doing the world tour, we would constantly change the names that we were saying depending on what city we were in, which is important to drive home. That this is not just a one city problem, it's not just a one little town problem. And internationally, I know before I joined, they were in South America and they sang it in Brazil in Portuguese when they were in Brazil. Nobody's off the hook. Well, and also that there's no shortage of names. If you can rotate through them in a world tour, there's no shortage of names.

[1:04:27] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Exactly. We have to kind of come together and decide each week or each month, okay. Do we want to trade this name out for that? You know, which is heartbreaking, but also I see as a due diligence as a performer, as a black woman, as a creator, as someone that is able to have the gift of being on this stage and living in my full black joy with all these other looking bodies on Broadway, and I get to be in just a suit, being the best version of myself, you know, I don't have to put on a costume, I don't have to paint my face any extravagant way. I can just be human and coexist with these humans on stage, but also not lose sense of humanity.

[1:05:12] Tendayi Kuumba: Yeah. In the process. So yeah, singing that song has been something that emotionally took a long time and still does at times take a lot to get through because emotionally can start to, you know, just build up things. And saying that to faces that now have masks on that you can't always tell if they're saying the names, and having to gauge how much of it is in my job to like try to force it out of you, or actually just let you sit with whatever you're feeling and maybe question why is it so hard for you to say a name. And it comes right after burning down the house, which is such a high energy, classic song of DAVID and Talking Heads. So, you know, you see that moment where people's balloons start to get deflated, you know.

And it's a thing where I choose to not feel bad for you. I choose to challenge you to take that same charge that you had with burning down the house and tap that into burning down the patriarchy within saying these names. If we can do this every night, that you can do it with us for that one night. And if you are feeling some any kind of way from saying these names, think of the families who will never be able to call on their children's names again because of these unforeseen circumstances. And we've been fortunate to have some of the families come to the shows as well, so that those moments, I think just continue to embody these possibilities of what a real utopia is, and that utopia isn't always jumping and smiles, but utopia is also tears and heartbreak. But that is the cycle that we have to go through, but we have to face it in order to really overcome it.

[1:06:58] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Yeah. Venu, is there something different about a protest song versus just a protest? Is there something that the music does that impacts that protest?

[1:07:15] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Yes, absolutely. I think so. Because as we have been discussing about this sense of sharing another person's emotional state, right? If you think about the functions of music and why it has existed from an evolutionary point of view, one of the functions it has served is for social bonding group cohesion, which allows us to sort of survive right from predators and that it allows to you know help each other communicate, especially long distance, right? One way to communicate is to rhythm to you know sound, and when it's when whatever you're saying is set in music, it has that additional impact of sharing that. And I think that's where all the bonding happens. So you don't have to be from the same community, but just the fact that you're there and you're sharing that same experience makes it all the more stronger.

[1:08:09] Dr. Vinu Alluri: I also think the way the like Tendai was saying, the way that this particular song is spared right after burning down the house is brilliant from a construction of the whole show perspective, because when you get to burning down the house, what we've been going through is this experience of growing as an audience together, right? We get to the song that we absolutely unite the whole audience, right? Everybody knows and adores that song, and everybody's involved and singing it along. So at that point, there's no denying the unity, the shared experience of everybody. So it's a great place to transition from that to hey, now as a community, we can also do this. It brings the audience in a in a more gentle way into this social protest.

I mean, if you think about if you start the show with that song and everybody's called, it's going to be a completely different experience. And it's probably gonna isolate people, right? Because everybody's gonna like everybody's gonna have their own experience. How am I reacting to this situation? How should I be reacting? What are they expecting of me? But by the time we get to that after burning that house and the whole show, we know that we're all experiencing this high emotions together, that we're all here for a good thing, that we're all in this positive emotion, and then therefore that transition to this protest space is in a way jarring but also gentle.

[1:09:44] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: That's exactly right. My last question is to Vinu and to Alejandro and Tendai. If you have something to add by all means, but how can we use music and movement to expand our minds and make us more effective problem solvers? Increase the number of those possibilities that you spoke about, Alejandro. Any tips you have for the listeners out there to use music or movement to be able to better problem solve and look at the world we're in and progress.

[1:10:18] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Yeah, so I think that there is this misguided opinion that is very common that thinking is something that should happen in sort of this abstract computer-oriented way where it's all about understanding symbols and zeros and ones, and you know, if you know one plus one, then you're gonna know two plus two, and that's how you should be thinking. One of the things, one of the unique features of our brain is that our brain, in a way, is an attempt to bring the world inside of us, right? All of our senses, everything, what we're trying to do is bring the world inside, make sense of it. And the ways that we occupy the world makes an impact, right? So the fact that we are a body, that we occupy space changes the way we relate to the world.

And when we talk about embodied cognition, there's this basically recognition that we are thinking along with our body. So there's research showing, for example, that people can solve problems better if they can utilize their hands, their gestures to sort of accompany this abstract level thinking that they're doing. And we've already mentioned sort of like language when we're communicating to each other, we're using our sometimes our hands to emphasize things or to communicate agreement with other people. So our thinking is not just happening in our brain isolated in this abstract way, but it is fully embodied. And what we think is important to take out from all this is that going for walks, do exercise, dancing, all of these things are making your brain work differently, are actually engaging different patterns of activity in your brain. And that is what's important if you want to you're gonna think differently, forcing it into having different patterns of activity is going to be a good way.

[1:12:23] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Venu, what about from your perspective?

[1:12:26] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Oh, I mean, I don't think I can follow what Alejandro said. I mean, he put it you know so nicely, but on a lighter note, I would say that well, if a show like AMERICAN Utopia can actually get people to somehow dissolve their ego and sort of allow themselves to be to just be, then that's what we probably need to do more of because I think it's always that sort of or importance that one gives to oneself, right? It's all about let's say us, our needs, and I think when that ego somehow dissolves to whichever way, right? To art, music, or even if it's computers, that's fine. Whatever you choose to do, when that sort of dissolves, then that's when things start to flow, and then you can solve your problems and hopefully not create problems for others.

[1:13:20] Ruthie Fierberg: Beautiful. Well, all of you, this has been such a treat to speak with each and every one of you. I hope you listeners out there have enjoyed this as much as I have. And buy a ticket to AMERICAN Utopia. It is open on Broadway until April 3rd. There are affordable tickets out there. I know some of my friends went for as little as $40 dollars. Guys, that's cheaper than dinner for two. So just go. And if you really can't do that, it is streamable on HBO Max, and it's a phenomenal capture. So thank you all for being here. I so appreciate your generosity of spirit, time, and knowledge.

[1:13:56] Tendayi Kuumba: Thank you.

[1:13:57] Dr. Alejandro Lleras: Thank you so much.

[1:13:58] Dr. Vinu Alluri: Thank you so much.

[1:14:05] Ruthie Fierberg: Why We Theater is a product of the Broadway Podcast Network. It's edited and mixed by Derek Gunther. If you like the show, subscribe at bpn.fm slash wwt or apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to leave a review and tell your friends. Our theme music is by Benjamin Velez. Why We Theater is recorded in part on the traditional lands of the Wapinger and Lenape peoples. I acknowledge this land was unjustly taken from them and pay my respect to elders both past and present. Special thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seales, Lee Silverman, Patrick Taylor, Tony Montaneri, Wesley Birdsall, Elena Mayer, and Suzanne Chipkin. For more resources for change, info about our guests, and more, visit us at WhyWeTheater.com.