Speaker 1: As a musician. Tour is my favorite and least favorite
Speaker 1: part of the job. You've got long drives, gas station sandwiches,
Speaker 1: shared hotel bathrooms, but on the good nights you also
Speaker 1: get them Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people collected into
Speaker 1: one room feeling the same way at the same time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you feel like an entertainer, but sometimes it feels
Speaker 1: like a rally, or like you're at church. I'm not
Speaker 1: a religious or a spiritual person, but that simultaneity of
Speaker 1: shared experience, it's a communion. Everybody lit up by the
Speaker 1: music and by one another. My name is Dessa. The
Speaker 1: name of the podcast you're attending is deeply human, and
Speaker 1: today we're asking why did crowds move you? Let the
Speaker 1: show begin. The first act on the bill is a
Speaker 1: master of crowd control and not too modest to tell
Speaker 1: you all about it. Hi, my name is cybers Sounds.
Speaker 1: I'm very famous in New York. Cifa is a live
Speaker 1: DJ in a stand up comic and it's like cent
Speaker 1: in New York. Listen. I'm an expert name dropper. My
Speaker 1: first big gig ever was with Little Kimp. I worked
Speaker 1: with everybody uh DJ Wise ninety seven, Wise jay z
Speaker 1: I broke Rihanna, I broke Rick Ross, very instrumental and breaking.
Speaker 1: Sean Paul Cipher's Instagram page is chock full of vintage
Speaker 1: picks of him cheessing with Kanye and Dave Chappelle, t
Speaker 1: I and Snoop Dogg. He's been in the game a
Speaker 1: long time. When you perform as a DJ live, can
Speaker 1: you explain what crowd control is? I have this knack
Speaker 1: to read the crowd. It's definitely my gift. I go
Speaker 1: into like this trance where I see the crowd as
Speaker 1: like colors and pockets of movement, and I'll be DJ
Speaker 1: for a thousand people and I'll look over to the
Speaker 1: left and I'll see like a group of twenty not
Speaker 1: really dancing for whatever reason, and my my honing skills
Speaker 1: tune into that part because that twenty people not dancing
Speaker 1: could turn into a virus and spread and make the
Speaker 1: crowd not you know, they could make the whole party flop.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about room reading, you know, and
Speaker 1: so you're looking for motion, can you give me some
Speaker 1: of the other indicators, Like, um, if you see blue faces,
Speaker 1: that means people are looking at their screens, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Which means that they're maybe not attending
Speaker 1: to the show. What else are you looking for besides movement?
Speaker 1: This movement? There's body language, there's facial expression. There's a
Speaker 1: thing where like the quick look at the booth. So
Speaker 1: you're playing a couple of songs and then you play
Speaker 1: a song that people don't like, and you will see
Speaker 1: some girls that quickly look at the booth like what
Speaker 1: do you? What is this? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And that hurts. But Sifa is a consummate pro who
Speaker 1: knows exactly what to spin to start the party. He
Speaker 1: can calculate the average age of the crowd and then
Speaker 1: consult the spreadsheet in his head of the song that
Speaker 1: would have been chart top during their high school years.
Speaker 1: Nostalgia tracks are strong medicine, and he gets on the
Speaker 1: mic himself to lure the first bodies to the dance floor.
Speaker 1: There's usually like some girls that are ready to party
Speaker 1: and they're like starting to move early, and I and
Speaker 1: I even say, hey, you are his shirt, like I
Speaker 1: got you, you know what I mean, I feel your vibe.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this for you. And then they feel special
Speaker 1: and they start opening up and I'm like, tell your
Speaker 1: friends to come out, and they come on come out,
Speaker 1: you know, And they come out and they start there,
Speaker 1: and then then a group of other people are like, yo,
Speaker 1: don't let them have all the fun, and the other
Speaker 1: people start coming. You'll see it, like the floor start
Speaker 1: to get filled up. As a comic, Piper's home base
Speaker 1: is at the Comedy Seller in Manhattan. It's a world
Speaker 1: famous joint, this little dim basement room that does three
Speaker 1: or four shows a night. Tickets are cheap, beers are expensive,
Speaker 1: and people line up down the block to get in.
Speaker 1: Our guys, Sip usually plays the role of the host,
Speaker 1: reading the audience and doing little bits in between sets.
Speaker 1: So I'm the first guy, you see, and I have
Speaker 1: ten minutes to get that crowd ready for the show. Comedians,
Speaker 1: as soon as they walk in the building, the first
Speaker 1: question is like, how's the crowd? How's the crowd? Always,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a feeling that's gestalt bigger than the
Speaker 1: individual people at individual tables, and Cypher's job is to
Speaker 1: prime the crowd. When he delivers, these people perfectly prepared
Speaker 1: to be entertained. Comics know it and appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: they'll give me a look like, oh this is this.
Speaker 1: You got this crowd right? So what makes a good
Speaker 1: crowd good? Let's pass the mic to Ann Templeton, a
Speaker 1: lecturer and social psychology at the University of Edinburgh in
Speaker 1: the UK. She researches what she calls a psychological crowd,
Speaker 1: a massive people who have more in common than just
Speaker 1: sharing the same physical space. So that is where you
Speaker 1: have a crowd of people who have a sense of
Speaker 1: connection to each other. They feel like the part of
Speaker 1: the same group, like a concert where everybody knows all
Speaker 1: the words, or protest where everyone is marching for the
Speaker 1: same cause. We're more likely to provide help to people
Speaker 1: we see as being in the same group as as
Speaker 1: we feel closer to them. Are more likely to share resources,
Speaker 1: whether that's water or bottle of alcohol or food with
Speaker 1: people who are in our group. Multiple psychological crowds can
Speaker 1: often exist within a single physical one. I think of
Speaker 1: a sports game where some sections are racking the home
Speaker 1: team jerseys and others are rooting for the visitors. And
Speaker 1: says that feeling connected to the people in a psychological
Speaker 1: crowd changes our behavior, can even change the way we
Speaker 1: Locomo I did a series of study start my PhD.
Speaker 1: We essentially found that when people are in a psychological
Speaker 1: crowd compared to physical crowd, the state in closer proximity
Speaker 1: with one another and larger subgroups within the crowd. So
Speaker 1: what seems to be happening is that group members or
Speaker 1: try to stay together with other group members, and they'll
Speaker 1: even reduce their speed and kind of walk further in
Speaker 1: order to stay together. To research really vast assemblies of people,
Speaker 1: and has studied the Hajj, the trip to Mecca, the
Speaker 1: practicing Muslims are expected to make at least once in
Speaker 1: their lives. The hash is one of the most densely
Speaker 1: populated crowds I've ever seen pilgrims. They're really kind of
Speaker 1: packed together, and they can be up to twelve people
Speaker 1: per square meter, which is so dense that you're actually
Speaker 1: like lifted up by the crowd. They found that the
Speaker 1: more people felt like they were part of a group,
Speaker 1: the safer they felt in the crowd, and that actually
Speaker 1: increased in more dense areas. For people who had lower
Speaker 1: identification with the crowds, so who didn't feel as much
Speaker 1: part of the group with the others, we see the
Speaker 1: opposite effect. So the more dense area was, the less
Speaker 1: safe they actually felt. You know what, The out stands
Speaker 1: for you know what the norms are, what the kind
Speaker 1: of values are of that crowd, and you act within them.
Speaker 1: So when people are with fellow group members, they feel
Speaker 1: more empowered to act certain waysted Wi anyway, So what
Speaker 1: does that mean exactly? What does it look like to
Speaker 1: be empowered to do something bold? Electrified by the crowd.
Speaker 1: Let's queue up our next cameo, Hey, I'm Gonzia and
Speaker 1: I make stuff, and I make what some people referred
Speaker 1: to as art. Ganzer is a street artist who grew
Speaker 1: up in Cairo, Egypt. He does large scale murals, sometimes
Speaker 1: several stories high, and most of it is overtly political.
Speaker 1: He gained international attention during the Arab Spring in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. Ganzer was at a friend's house one day
Speaker 1: when his Twitter feed blew up with news of a
Speaker 1: protest on the streets, and one post in particular grabbed
Speaker 1: his attention. A friend was live broadcasting video from what
Speaker 1: looked like a very big march headed towards the rear square.
Speaker 1: I just left it out to see what was up,
Speaker 1: and I just so happened to arrive at exactly that
Speaker 1: that moment when kind of that big march, those protesters
Speaker 1: arrived to the square, and the square was really blocked
Speaker 1: off by so much right please. The square was lined
Speaker 1: with people watching, waiting to find out what would happen
Speaker 1: when such a surge of marchers met the police lines.
Speaker 1: A lot of people weren't intending on participating in protest,
Speaker 1: myself included. And then when the protesters did in fact
Speaker 1: arrive without kind of words being exchanged or anything, is
Speaker 1: just like, okay, they want to make it through, and
Speaker 1: so they just kept on marching. And then the police
Speaker 1: of their reaction was to use their sticks and batons
Speaker 1: and whatever to hit the protesters. And seeing that, witnessing
Speaker 1: that so so up close, just prompted people to kind
Speaker 1: of go crazy, like this is unacceptable. That's when the
Speaker 1: crowd got big. There was a billboard in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Tiger Square that advertised the main political part
Speaker 1: Preaty that has been in power for a long time,
Speaker 1: or wasn't power up until that point, which is Mubarak's
Speaker 1: U political party in two thousand eleven, who's named Mubarak
Speaker 1: had been in power for thirty years, heading a regime
Speaker 1: that many Egyptians were decrying as corrupt and repressive. I
Speaker 1: felt like, okay, so eventually they're going to crack down
Speaker 1: on this protest and there will be no sign of it,
Speaker 1: you know. So I had a spray paint in my backpack.
Speaker 1: I climbed the billboard and spray painted on the back
Speaker 1: of it, basically what what everyone was chanting, which was
Speaker 1: down with mbaruk. When they saw me climbed the billboard,
Speaker 1: they started like shouting at me, telling me like to
Speaker 1: come down, and there was definitely the sense of everyone
Speaker 1: wanted it was very very keen on the protest being peaceful.
Speaker 1: So people started chatting at me and I just sort
Speaker 1: of gestured with my hands tell everyone to calm down.
Speaker 1: It's not what you think. And then I pulled out
Speaker 1: the spray paint from the backpack and then as soon
Speaker 1: as they saw that then they kind of started like
Speaker 1: encouraged me, like oh okay, yeah, spray something. And before
Speaker 1: I had even completed the sentence, everyone started to really
Speaker 1: cheer quite loudly on clap and you could hear it
Speaker 1: going throughout the square. Do you think that this is
Speaker 1: something that you would have ever done if you weren't
Speaker 1: in a crowd. No, it was a crowd based right,
Speaker 1: It's like myself being moved by the crowd and and
Speaker 1: literally my arms just being told to write what they
Speaker 1: were saying. You know what I mean. That's like would
Speaker 1: never have happened without being in that crowd, for sure.
Speaker 1: The voices embodies around him gave Ganzier the nerve to
Speaker 1: act on a brave impulse. He'd been critical of the
Speaker 1: government before, but in that square, in that moment, he
Speaker 1: became the mouthpiece of the crowd in a way that
Speaker 1: he had never previously anticipated or experienced. He had this
Speaker 1: feeling of total connection, and other people in the crowd
Speaker 1: seemed to feel it too. People were banding together, helping
Speaker 1: one another. Police forces, in an attempt to dissolve the assembly,
Speaker 1: fired tear gas into the crowd. Ginzer had never seen
Speaker 1: tear gas before, and after the boom of the shot,
Speaker 1: he says, there was a moment of stillness, then panic,
Speaker 1: but momentarily the canister was flying back towards the police.
Speaker 1: Someone must have picked it up and thrown it by hand.
Speaker 1: It did feel quite magical in a sense. I think
Speaker 1: there was just this feeling of complete non existence of
Speaker 1: the ego of the self, and it was it was
Speaker 1: really the collective us individually, like each person is different,
Speaker 1: you know, each person has different interests, different concerns, different jobs.
Speaker 1: But then in that moment, in that space, everyone there
Speaker 1: was a feeling that like, none of that, none of
Speaker 1: that is really important without dealing with this other thing
Speaker 1: first for everyone, you know, and I remember just being
Speaker 1: moved by the various actions that every one was doing.
Speaker 1: Selflessness was really just contagious, and it was just sort
Speaker 1: of echoing off of each and every single person in
Speaker 1: the square in that moment. Ganzer eventually left Cairo and
Speaker 1: moved to the US, in part because he was being
Speaker 1: singled out by Egyptian media outlets sympathetic to the government.
Speaker 1: In print, online, and on TV. The protesters at to
Speaker 1: Rear Square were described as thugs, rioters, and outlaws. In
Speaker 1: the press, images of big crowds are often accompanied by
Speaker 1: messages of concern. Big congregations of people are sometimes portrayed
Speaker 1: as fundamentally criminal or particularly susceptible to base animalistic impulses,
Speaker 1: and Templeton are crowd expert says that there's a very
Speaker 1: specific reason for those associations. Generally, I get the sense
Speaker 1: that you think that crowds got a bad rap, but
Speaker 1: like there's been a lot of heterism on crowds. Well,
Speaker 1: do a quick walkdown history ly so one of the
Speaker 1: original kind of crowd theorists was Gustave Lebon, and he
Speaker 1: was advocating how terrible crowds were during the Paris community.
Speaker 1: For those of you feeling a little rusty and nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Parisian history, the Paris Commune was a short lived
Speaker 1: revolutionary government led by common people. It was the product
Speaker 1: of a working class insurrection in the city, masses of
Speaker 1: people revolting against French federal rule. And this character, Gustave
Speaker 1: Lebon was not a fan of democracy. He was really
Speaker 1: promoting this idea that crowds are these irrational, spineless masses.
Speaker 1: It just needs to be controlled by a good leader.
Speaker 1: And says, a lot of our modern ideas about crowds
Speaker 1: stem from Lebon's not so thinly veiled classism. He kind
Speaker 1: of popularized this notional crowds and that persisted and persisted,
Speaker 1: and you look at media coverage even now, you see
Speaker 1: things like stampedes. You see about the irrational mobs and
Speaker 1: talk about mentality, so they really do get a bad rap.
Speaker 1: Would he still consider a group of people at the
Speaker 1: opera a crowd. So Christ in the upper early they
Speaker 1: were absolutely fine. But the working classes here were revolting. No, no,
Speaker 1: they were irrational, they were mindless. Sometimes violence does erupt
Speaker 1: within a crowd, but Ann says that the majority of
Speaker 1: people don't exhibit disregard, let alone malice for one another,
Speaker 1: even in desperate circumstances. If you look at the Manchester
Speaker 1: Arena attack from the Ariana Grande concert, we saw great
Speaker 1: examples of people going back in and helping one another.
Speaker 1: In two thousand seventeen, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive
Speaker 1: at a concert in Manchester, England, right after the singer
Speaker 1: Ariana Grande finished her last song. There were over fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand people at that show and twenty two of them
Speaker 1: died amid the fear and the confusion right after the blast.
Speaker 1: Crowd members were there for one another. They're performing for
Speaker 1: us to aid to each other. They were giving emotionals, support,
Speaker 1: they were sharing Walter all before emergency services were able
Speaker 1: to get into the building, the cards were already performing
Speaker 1: amazing coordination to support one another, to match up children
Speaker 1: with their families, for parents to look after kids, and
Speaker 1: recommends that authorities and emergency personnel work with the crowd
Speaker 1: instead of focusing on gaining control of it. The crowd
Speaker 1: is often pretty good at taking care of itself. Did
Speaker 1: you know that in the UK they call an intermission
Speaker 1: an interval? I just found out myself two countries separated
Speaker 1: by a common language. Man, Okay, this is radio, so
Speaker 1: we gotta be quick about this. You've got, let's say,
Speaker 1: eight seconds to visit the bathroom, get a refreshment, and
Speaker 1: return to your seat, and we're all settled back in fantastic.
Speaker 1: From up here on stage, you can see little ripples
Speaker 1: of motion moving across an audience. Having been a performer
Speaker 1: myself for most of my adult life, it's still fascinating
Speaker 1: to me to watch all the varied ways that crowds move.
Speaker 1: For example, I recently finished it tour opening for a
Speaker 1: band called Thievery Corporation. Their stuff has big drumbeats, sitar,
Speaker 1: kind of groovy vocals, and during our set, the motion
Speaker 1: of their audience is so different than what I'm used
Speaker 1: to seeing at my own gigs that at first it
Speaker 1: was downright disorienting. Like is a hip hop artist, I'm
Speaker 1: accustomed to staccato gestures fans with one arm up, beating
Speaker 1: in time to the music, whereas this thievery crowd was
Speaker 1: way way looser. After our first show together, my bandmate
Speaker 1: Joshua described it as a kelp forest, This vast sea
Speaker 1: of fluid, undulating bodies cipher sounds the very famous in
Speaker 1: New York crowd whisperer sees the same thing when he's
Speaker 1: up there in the DJ. Depending the type of music
Speaker 1: and the type of party, you will see like like
Speaker 1: ocean waves, Synchronized dancing or swaying is usually a great
Speaker 1: sign for a performer, an indicator that the audience is
Speaker 1: swept up in the same feeling. But sometimes movements sweeping
Speaker 1: through a crowd can be dangerous. Let's welcome our next
Speaker 1: guest to center stage. Will you introduce yourself to me
Speaker 1: as you would have at a party? Oh? Right, at
Speaker 1: a party, I would say, hi, a Marianna, I do physics,
Speaker 1: and you would say, oh, physics. Oh I was so
Speaker 1: bad in physics, buz no. But that's what everyone says
Speaker 1: without realizing I also was very, very budding in physics.
Speaker 1: Ariana Batanelli is an editor of the journal Communications Physics.
Speaker 1: She's also an applied mathematician with a background in theoretical
Speaker 1: physics and a passion for crowd movement and behavior. Under
Speaker 1: certain conditions, the physical forces are crowd movement can overwhelm
Speaker 1: the people in it. So if you have a little
Speaker 1: bit of space in front of you and you all
Speaker 1: want to get to the festivals as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: as long as someone takes some little step forward, you
Speaker 1: will take another step forward. And so at some point
Speaker 1: the pressure builds up from the back to the front,
Speaker 1: and in the front you see people basically start to
Speaker 1: bobbling left and right. So there starts being some sort
Speaker 1: of waves into the crowd where people can't really do
Speaker 1: anything and being transport by the wave. And then in
Speaker 1: that condition it can happen that like maybe two waves
Speaker 1: crush or you get smashed into a wall and something
Speaker 1: like that. And yeah, so that's pretty ugly. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you focused a lot on crowd density and like high
Speaker 1: density crowds, how many people and how tightly packed you
Speaker 1: have to be to be identity. So there is six
Speaker 1: seven people per square meters, six or seven people for
Speaker 1: square met Okay, So for those of us who don't
Speaker 1: think in meters, how far away am I from the
Speaker 1: other people? Here's super squeezed by these people, Like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to fit seven person in a square
Speaker 1: meter unless you have a box around the square meter,
Speaker 1: like I'm tight, Like I can smell other people's wine
Speaker 1: and stuff, like I'm I'm being touched. My body is touched.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, definitely, the forces at play in these high
Speaker 1: density crowds can get intense enough to seriously hurt people.
Speaker 1: The disaster at the Astro World Festival in Houston, Texas
Speaker 1: was a tragic case. And point and Templeton you might remember,
Speaker 1: mentioned that at the Hajje, densities can reach a dozen
Speaker 1: people per square meter. At the two fifteen pilgrimage, more
Speaker 1: than two thousand people were killed in what's often called
Speaker 1: a crowd crush. A crowd crush is basically when the
Speaker 1: density it's so high that people can't move freely anymore.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes those pressures are so high that people basically well,
Speaker 1: they are compressed by the crowd until near lungs can't
Speaker 1: expand anymore and you and you choke to death in
Speaker 1: the middle of the crowd. It's it's quite horrible. Even
Speaker 1: if nobody is pushing, nobody's trying to harm anybody. The
Speaker 1: pressure can build. It's just a byproduct of the crowd
Speaker 1: itself compressed way, way too tightly. The point is one
Speaker 1: it's to dents. It's too late. These super tightly packed
Speaker 1: crowds also increase risk of trampling. To try to avoid
Speaker 1: these dangers, people like Ariana study the mechanics of dense crowds,
Speaker 1: striving to understand the precise manner in which human bodies
Speaker 1: crammed together. As it turns out, some of the answers
Speaker 1: to their questions might be found in green silos. Let
Speaker 1: me explain, Farmers, after harvesting their grain, store it in silos.
Speaker 1: Retrieving this grain later, however, sometimes proves hazardous. Like if
Speaker 1: you open the silo from the bottom trying to take
Speaker 1: out those grains, then you have those like large scale reactions.
Speaker 1: The grain and the silos can shift, compact and create
Speaker 1: pressure waves that get crazy intense, and it can create
Speaker 1: so much pressure that it basically breaks. The silo blows
Speaker 1: my mind. I had no idea. So in some way,
Speaker 1: it's like filling a stadium with people was compared to
Speaker 1: filling a silo with grain. To make sure that we
Speaker 1: don't smash the people or explode the silo A Researchers
Speaker 1: have also discovered some useful mathematical parallels in studying coffee beans.
Speaker 1: For example, in answering questions about evacuation planning, what is
Speaker 1: the optimal size of a door in order for the
Speaker 1: evacuation to be fast as possible, because like as with
Speaker 1: coffee beans, like they can clog and people can clog.
Speaker 1: And they found out that you can have an ob
Speaker 1: stockhold if you put an obstacle in the right place
Speaker 1: in front of the door. Actually, people have our force
Speaker 1: to alternate. Counterintuitively, placing a carefully designed impediment in the
Speaker 1: path of a crowd can keep foot traffic flowing, preventing
Speaker 1: people from clogging exits. And even if you're not designing
Speaker 1: evacuation routes, here's a bit of news you can use
Speaker 1: from a high density crowd researcher. Think about how difficult
Speaker 1: it can be to move through a pack concert, trying
Speaker 1: to get out of the throng in the center of
Speaker 1: the floor to go to the bathroom or make your
Speaker 1: way to coat check. It involves a lot of mumbled apologies,
Speaker 1: the risk of slashing beer on somebody's new kicks, and
Speaker 1: a lot of low key body checking. But there is
Speaker 1: a solution. If everyone is facing the stage, for example,
Speaker 1: and you want to get out, you want to move
Speaker 1: diagonally towards the stage to extract yourself from the crowd,
Speaker 1: make your way towards one of the sidewalls while also
Speaker 1: moving forward towards the stage a bit boom. First in
Speaker 1: line at the restaurant. Look at you, Look at you.
Speaker 1: Even though much of Ariana's research has focused on crowd
Speaker 1: worst case scenarios, let the record show she's not always
Speaker 1: all serious. I've been in a few more spits. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: She also talks real casually about some concert phenomenon called
Speaker 1: the Wall of Death. Like it's people running around because
Speaker 1: at some point they decide that it's cool to run around,
Speaker 1: or the wall of death. You ever seen any Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what you're talking about. At some
Speaker 1: point someone screams the world death or whatever, and the
Speaker 1: crowd separates into hols, and it's like then it becomes
Speaker 1: like a medieval movie where they start running towards each
Speaker 1: other and then they crash in the middle, like just smashing,
Speaker 1: like two walls smashing through. Does everybody sorry, producers in
Speaker 1: the room, do you guys know what this is. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows what this is. I am not metal enough to
Speaker 1: have witnessed a wall of death, but I do absolutely
Speaker 1: know what it feels like to be moved by something
Speaker 1: not quite tangible that circulates in a crowded room. It's
Speaker 1: a mood, it's a buzz. It's like everyone there is
Speaker 1: plugged into some shared circuit. Take comedy shows, for instance,
Speaker 1: like the one Cipher hosts. Laughter is contagious. It's a
Speaker 1: feeling that if the comedians good or the jokes are good,
Speaker 1: they shot something into the air and everyone felt it
Speaker 1: at the exact same time. It had an involuntary response.
Speaker 1: It's like a crowd has emergent properties of its own.
Speaker 1: There's a positive feedback loop as feelings and movements spread
Speaker 1: and get amplified, like when a good DJ is spinning.
Speaker 1: The audience performs for itself. The dancers work it, Strangers
Speaker 1: make way for one another, mouth the words at each other.
Speaker 1: It's like a tiny culture develops there in that one place,
Speaker 1: a little society that lasts for only one night. And
Speaker 1: I love when somebody just walks in and they immediately
Speaker 1: start dancing, like they danced their way to the dance floor.
Speaker 1: That's how you know you're killing it, because, like, the
Speaker 1: music is always going to be the music. But what
Speaker 1: they're feeling when they walk in is the vibe? Is
Speaker 1: it a collective vibe? Is it a vibe that in
Speaker 1: part is generated by the crowd? Oh? Absolutely, there's no
Speaker 1: other way to create a vibe in that environment. You know,
Speaker 1: the music is what they're hearing, and the vibe is
Speaker 1: what they're feeling. I've spent a considerable portion of my
Speaker 1: life chasing that feeling, that vibe, a tour from city
Speaker 1: to city with my band, and every night on stage,
Speaker 1: I try to say the right thing, or sing the
Speaker 1: right song, or lift my arm into the light. It's
Speaker 1: just the right moment so that a room full of
Speaker 1: strangers will feel, for a while at least united, connected
Speaker 1: enough to let down our defenses and allow ourselves to
Speaker 1: be moved in one another's company and buy one another's company. Okay,
Speaker 1: to the end, you guys, A final bow from our
Speaker 1: guests and Templeton ganzer Ariana about a Nelly and of
Speaker 1: course cipher sounds. You got room, Idessa have been your
Speaker 1: host this evening. What James such a smart alec in
Speaker 1: the booth James turn the clapping back on Thank You.
Speaker 1: Deeply Human is a BBC World Service and American public
Speaker 1: media co production with I Heart Media, and it's hosted
Speaker 1: by Messa. Find me online at Duessa on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Dussa Darling on Twitter. Be at home Safe everybody caffeine, nicotine, alcohol.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone in the world uses some sort of drug, drink,
Speaker 1: and drugs have played a huge role not only in
Speaker 1: our social lives, but in civic and sometimes religious life too.
Speaker 1: Next time on deeply Human, I'm asking why do we
Speaker 1: use intoxicans?