Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, a holistic look at the power of music in our everyday lives. I have two guests with me today. Joining me from Los Angeles is Yasi Ansari, a registered dietitian, nutritionist and certified specialist in sports Dietetics practicing in LA. And joining me from my home state of Michigan is Dr. Steven Karageanes, a primary care sports medicine physician, certified in performing arts medicine, practicing in Novi and Brighton, Michigan. Together, Steven and Yasi host the Athletes and the Arts podcast. The Athletes and the Arts Organization is a joint effort between American College of Sports Medicine and Performing Arts Medicine Association. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Yasi and Steven. Hi Mindy.
Steven Karageanes: [00:00:57] Thanks for having us.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:59] I was going to actually have each one of you, of you just kind of say, Hi, my name is whatever, just so that listeners can hear the difference in your voice. But that worked out perfect because you both said something at different times and your voices are very distinctively different from one another. So I think we’re good. I think listeners will be able to tell which one of you is talking. Yeah, starting out, can you just tell us about athletes and the arts? What is it? How and why and when was it started and what is its mission?
Steven Karageanes: [00:01:30] Thanks, Mindy, for having us. I really appreciate your time with us. And it’s great to talk about this because it’s a passion project for about ten years now, started by Randy Dick and John Snyder. Randy Dick worked at the American College of Sports Medicine, and John Snyder has been a producer of Grammy Award winning producer for many years in music. And he was working at the New Orleans Loyola School, developing a program and teaching music When they came across the idea that there is a huge need to get performing arts medicine up to snuff to take care of performers. And one of the biggest problems we saw, they saw, I should say in the beginning was that there was just very few resources for performers of all shapes and sizes musicians, vocalists, dancers and such. And so they had this idea and they started collating around the idea of getting different groups together. They’re both sports medicine and performing arts medicine organizations and having them come together in a large consortium to exchange information and kind of like borrow concepts from one to the other. Sports medicine has been around for really in a serious form for about 30, 35 years. And performing arts medicine is just kind of taking shape. I was in the first certification course in 2016, so it’s really young compared to sports medicine. So the idea was can we take sports medicine concepts and research the research base in that world and apply it to performing arts medicine to have like best practices? And from a diet standpoint, from a training standpoint, from sleep, and from how often a person trains and how to take care of specific injuries and all those kinds of things and get those organizations together to develop this field faster. And that was about in May of 2013 that we took off.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:12] That is really fascinating because there are so many similarities between athletes and performing artists. Now, some of those similarities, I think anyone who’s performed as an artist is like, Yeah, that’s a no brainer. But when I was looking at this a little bit deeper, there were several similarities that hadn’t really occurred to me before. I mean, the ones that I totally thought about were things like overuse injuries and repetitive use injuries and things like that, and also things like mental techniques for performance, optimized performance, things like that. But some of the things I was reading about on your website, I thought, Oh, that makes sense. And I had never thought about that. And one of those things was both athletes and performers are playing at any time of day or night. It’s not always a consistent time. There’s often jet lag involved. There’s all kinds of playing environments that you could be in in terms of temperature and sound and things like that. What are some of the other similarities between athletes and performing artists that many listeners might not really recognize or realize, things that they might be surprised by?
Yasi Ansari: [00:04:25] Well, I personally think that they both involve competition for the most part. Just looking at the bigger picture, they both have activities that to some extent entertain in performing artists probably a little bit more. At least they’re out there for the purpose of entertainment. And then both involve skill and physical exertion. And I think some of the more detailed areas that I like to share when it comes to the similarities between these two include heat and dehydration. So that’s a big one. Long days of practice. This is travel being on tour buses or just, you know, travel buses. If you’re, you know, an athlete that may be in like the traditional sport, mental health and wellbeing. So making sure that they’re they’re both getting the support they need from a mental health standpoint. And then, of course, in my area, nutrition, everyone needs a solid nutritional game plan when it comes to their sport, whether they’re the athlete or the performing artist.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:28] Yeah, Some of the other quick things that I want to just make note of too is the fact that both of these categories of people often have no days off, partly because they really feel like they have to make money and also because a lot of times there’s no off season. And we’re seeing that even with young children now. When I was a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, the sports scene was not nearly as intense as it is now. I’m in Minnesota, so hockey is a big deal and it’s kind of like if you don’t start playing hockey at three years old, you’re you’re too old by the time you’re in, you know, second grade. So kids are doing these sports year round for long periods of time.
Steven Karageanes: [00:06:11] And, you know, you well, you just brought up a point that’s very interesting because both athletes and performers do have a very similar problem in the idea about sports specialization. We’re starting to see more and more data all the time in athletes that if you play one sport all the time from age three on up and yeah, and we all know about hockey and how it is to get into the right teams and the right travel teams, the right leagues to get to the right point in junior hockey and to get to the pros. We hear that all the time, but we see proof all the time. Now. Evidence that supports specialization is bad for the athlete. And then you take it, but then you take a dancer or a musician who’s been playing their instrument or dancing since age three all the time. And we’re seeing similar problems. If you do nothing else but that activity over and over, you’re going to develop problems, especially if you can’t get your body to diversify its movement and the movement chain how the body functions.
Steven Karageanes: [00:07:05] We see that all the time. But one of the interesting differences between athletes and performers is that and I always use this example all the time, if you’re a batter in baseball and you strike out a couple of times and you get a couple hits, you bat three hits out of ten batting 300, you’re a success. If you’re a dancer and you’re on stage and you miss one leap, one lift, you may not even get a chance for a second lift. You don’t get you know, you can’t hit three out of ten. You can’t be a performer in an orchestra performing in the theater for Chicago the musical. And three out of ten shows hit your notes, right? You’re gone. And if you if you pretty much like 1 or 2 screw ups. So the level of perfection that they try to attain puts more pressure on these performers than I think. I mean, in athletics, of course, the competition aspect. But I think the pressure sometimes is really intense in the performing arts, more so in a different way than athletes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:00] Interesting. Well, another difference that I saw on I think your website that I think is really interesting and important to point out is that athletic careers are generally much shorter than performing artist careers because you’re physically capable of making music for most of your life. But you’re not going to have a 60 year old out there playing on a major League baseball team.
Steven Karageanes: [00:08:22] It depends, though. It depends because I mean, it all comes down like dancers careers have always been cut short and a lot of cases because whether there’s like physical aspects or like the young dancer look versus a more mature dancer, whatever the aesthetics is, we’re getting longer careers now for dancers with more education about nutrition and health and wellness and such. But it also depends on the competition aspect being able to compete for spots and be able to like. I mean, there’s lots of musicians that hit professionally in pop music, and then after a couple years they, you know, for whatever health issues that beset them, then fall by the wayside. And then the next band comes up and they can’t get into their contract. So sometimes you have you have gigging musicians that can play physically play, but not at a career level. And that’s what we’re trying to do is help those musicians and athletes and performers who want to get to that level, try to get there as best as we can. But sometimes the careers I mean, there’s a great example is like the performers, the musicians lifestyle, right? You know, sex, drugs, rock and roll. Yeah. Party all night. Well, most musicians who are worth their own salt are not going to be able to party all night, all the time and still perform. They’re going to need to have nutrition to get.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:33] Beyond a certain age. Right?
Steven Karageanes: [00:09:35] Right. I mean, Aerosmith travels around with a whole big van with a whole bunch of training equipment that helps them stay working out and stay healthy. And they need to be able to do that. So people who fall by that, that that culture of performance sometimes become victim to it as well.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:50] Sure. A couple other similarities that I found interesting was if we’re kind of talking about the physical aspect, career threatening injuries or something that both of. These groups have in common and then hearing health hearing loss because of loud music. But a lot of sporting events, football games and things like that can have a noise level that’s over 100dB at that level where it’s like 15 minutes of that and you’re experiencing some hearing loss. So I thought that was really interesting as well. And then I think Yasi mentioned the mental emotional component in terms of mental health. And with both of these groups, there’s a real passion and sense of identity in their job. I mean, part of you is lost if you can’t do that or you don’t do that for some reason, you don’t make music or you don’t perform your sport. And then also there’s the whole mental emotional component of job security. If you’re injured, there’s probably ten people waiting behind you to take your job. So lots of really interesting similarities that pressure to succeed, the performance anxiety, all of that, but also some interesting differences as well.
Steven Karageanes: [00:11:00] Most dance companies don’t have a minor league, right. You can’t get hurt and then go down to like the minor league ballet and then rehab and then come back and get your job back here. Right. If they get hurt, a lot of times they’re gone. So that’s why health care for the ballet while they’re performing is so important.
Yasi Ansari: [00:11:17] So important, and kind of thinking about the opportunities that they also might have after even though someone might be medically retired. I think the positive, the one positive that I can see is that with time, we’re opening up so many new opportunities for dancers to get involved, whether it’s in the health or choreography or whatever that might look like for them. But thinking outside of the box a little bit and using the skill set to, you know, take their career to the next level in a different way.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:48] Interesting. So athletes in the arts brings sports medicine and performing arts medicine organizations and practitioners together to better meet the needs of everybody who’s represented by those groups. It’s a coalition of practitioners that include dietitians and nutritional professionals, physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, choreographers, health insurers, wellness coaches, mental health providers, any other. I mean, that’s a lot of a lot of groups of people represented right there. Of any other groups that you want to mention, I’m sure there’s more that are involved, but any others that you just want to mention?
Steven Karageanes: [00:12:27] Vocal coaches. The Voice Foundation’s part of it. The Drum Corps International Drum Corps is huge. It’s a huge organization and they do a lot of work with marching bands all across the country. Yazzy mentioned this a moment ago about, you know, nutrition and heat and hours and hours of practice. And these are people that are out in the heat in the summertime for hours at a time. So drum corps is a big part of what we do as well.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:51] Well, I believe right now athletes in the arts is a subsidiary of American College of Sports Medicine, but he eventually will be independent. Is that right?
Steven Karageanes: [00:13:00] We are. So we’re 17 organizations as a whole group. And then we are kind of a subset of CSM for like operational aspects of things. So we have our own 501, C three. We have all that established, but we share resources with the American College of Sports Medicine for operations. So it’s kind of like a subset organization from them. But we operate on our own.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:22] Okay. We sort of alluded to this already that sports have really led the way when it comes to things like performance anxiety, mental strategies for peak performance. I know that as a musician, all of the information that I’ve read has really had its origins in sports medicine. So we’ve really been taking advantage of the sports community being way ahead of us in that area. Are there other areas where athletes have really led the way and musicians have benefited from that, or areas where maybe musicians have led the way and athletes are kind of benefiting from that.
Yasi Ansari: [00:14:00] I would love to shed light on the the sports medicine group. I think seeing how successful athletic programs have been within established sports medicine program and having, you know, a head physician, having a psychologist, having the dietician, having basically an interdisciplinary group. I’ve seen it especially. I feel like both Steve and I have seen it even within our our podcast, when we interview different organizations and companies, we’re starting to see that they are incorporating these interdisciplinary professionals to be able to support their athletes in the best way. So that is something that I feel has really stepped up over the last, I want to say 10 to 20 years.
Steven Karageanes: [00:14:46] 100% agree. Absolutely. There’s another thing that I think is interesting, too. Here’s another interesting example. If you are a marathon runner and you’re training, typically you’ll have a two weeks of increased mileage and one week decrease and. Two weeks up and down, up and down. Very intricate program until two weeks before the marathon. And then you bring it down, you taper, you go really low and your mileage to get yourself recovered for the big race. And then in basketball, you have shootarounds the day before a game. Football, you have walkthroughs day before a game. You’re not in pads hitting the day before the big game and dance. A lot of the shows, especially in colleges, they’ll get the choreography set and they work very hard at that and then they work to refine it and they make their adjustments and then they clean it and they repeat it over and over and over and over. Then they get more and more intense as the show gets closer. And then they do the dress rehearsals full out all the days of the show before the show. And then they do the show. So when I talk to some of these some of these dancers, they’re talking about like I’m just trying to get through the show. I’m just trying to I’m just trying to, like, get through this thing, man. I’m so tired. And I’m one of the things we’re trying to help educate is like, look, we learned a long time ago in sports medicine, you don’t do that. You don’t overload your athletes and your performers right before performance. And that’s something that still needs to catch on. It’s still it’s a it’s a fear factor, really, more than anything else. Everybody’s afraid of like, if I don’t clean it just one more time, it’s going to look terrible and it never does. But of course, that’s the fear.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:18] Talk to us a little bit about the differences that an artist might receive if they’re being treated by somebody who’s a part of athletes in the arts, maybe is familiar with the resources you offer. Let’s say just as an example, an artist has carpal tunnel syndrome. A regular doctor, I’m guessing, will tell them to completely stop playing their instrument. Would there be sometimes different recommendations from somebody who’s been trained in performing arts, medicine, sports, medicine, who understands a little bit more of what goes into being an artist in terms of addressing something like that? Can you talk to us about that a little bit?
Steven Karageanes: [00:16:58] Well, right off the bat, you just nailed it right there. So many times, folks who don’t know dancers or performers will say to that person, shut it down for two weeks, four weeks. Any dancer with an ankle injury gets the boot. Any musician with like a wrist injury gets a splint or a cast or something like that, and then it get better. Now, sometimes that’s appropriate sometimes. But most of the time, overuse injuries aren’t overuse injuries. They’re actually repetitive use injuries with mechanical flaws. And so what we a person who’s trained in performing arts medicine will, number one, have multiple different, as Yoshi referred to, will have multiple different disciplines available to them. They’ll have a physical therapist, occupational therapist, nutritionist of all those aspects they can bring to bear right away. So for carpal tunnel, for instance, ergonomics, ergonomic evaluations, muscle imbalances in the forearm, are the flexors way too dominant versus the extensors causing the carpal bones to shift, causing more narrowing of the carpal tunnel, which causes more compression of the nerve, which comes from the position of the person playing at the piano or the drummer. Or maybe the sticks are too narrow for the drummer, or the throne is too high. All these little things you’ll intuitively know to even ask right away, and then you’ll figure out ways to help them still perform or still work around the injury to some degree. Not shutting them down totally, especially if they’re gigging, if they’re a musician and you live on your gigs and you get paid when you perform and you don’t get paid when you don’t perform, you know, shutting it down for two weeks may not be an option at all, which is what happens, right? They just go away. They plow right through it. So so I think that’s the multidisciplinary nature of this. And then the experience helps you figure out ways to help the person get better while they’re still doing their job.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:39] I think that’s a huge, huge benefit right there of any artist who’s experiencing any type of a challenge with injury or overuse or things like that, just to see some kind of a practitioner who can help them address this in a real holistic way and really recognize how their armature or their ergonomics of how they’re sitting as they play is playing into what their injury is and how they can prevent it, not only just right it, but prevent it in the future.
Steven Karageanes: [00:19:09] Right? A vocalist with a vocal strain, you need a pro for that. But what if the person’s core is weak and they can’t stand up properly? They their back is always achy and sore. They can’t get enough abdominal control because there’s not enough abdominal strength to push air through. So just like that, you need to be able to look at the vocal cords like a vocal EAA, but also be looking at everything else. And then maybe the person fatigues, much fatigues, too much from rehearsal. And then you do a nutritional analysis and you’re like, they eat a Twix bar in the bag of chips and that’s their lunch. And they, you know, they burn off energy before, before they’re done with rehearsal. So, yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:46] They’re feeling really good for like 20 minutes and then crash.
Steven Karageanes: [00:19:50] Low. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, like.
Yasi Ansari: [00:19:55] I also want to say that the beauty of athletes in the arts, you know, we. There are groups that do research and find the most appropriate way, especially after COVID, of how to make sure that the arts were safe in schools and in different programs. So, you know, athletes in the arts is so much bigger than just like hands on care. It’s also helping build protocols and it’s helping support guidance on just how to to manage the sport within each program, depending on what may be occurring in real life.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:29] Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because as we’re talking initially I was thinking about professional performing artists, but as we were talking and you mentioned drum corps and things like that, I’m thinking this is so helpful for K through 12 schools. It’s so helpful for marching band directors. It’s so helpful for even private piano teachers, which is what I did for a number of years to just be kind of like, okay, before you send your kid to the recital, give them a healthy snack, like give them something with protein so they’re not showing up hungry and then having a meltdown because they missed one note in their song that they played or something like that. You know, it’s something that all of us can implement into our music education no matter what level we’re teaching at. Right?
Yasi Ansari: [00:21:12] Yeah. Think that’s the exciting part of a lot of this, is now that we’re seeing how much especially from again, my perspective of nutrition, how much nutrition can impact the sport, the performing artists. We’re incorporating nutrition into the curriculum of dancers and in drum corps and marching artists. And so it’s exciting to see how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. And then also just building different resources for different populations. So, you know, we have different nutritional resources that can be incorporated for different audiences, no matter how old they are and which program that they are performing in. So that’s been really, really exciting.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:57] Yeah. Tell us some more about the educational courses and curriculums that you offer, because I believe you’re developing an online class and you already have some kind of an educational course available for secondary schools. That’s especially helpful for marching bands and things like that. Tell us about some of those educational offerings that you have.
Steven Karageanes: [00:22:17] Yeah, so there’s a programs through PAMA, for instance, of course worked at Performing Arts Medical Association that we’re working with are part of athletes in the arts as well. We’ve worked with a college curriculums to establish best practices and safe practices for performance and sound hearing levels for musicians to be exposed to and best practices for how to go about executing that The coursework is being done through PAMA. They’re also developing a specialized physical program, doing a history and physical sports. Physical for an athlete, having a similar thing for performers called the Diva, which stands for dancers, instrumentalists, vocalists and so forth. So yeah, Diva, Right, exactly. So appropriate. But yeah, so there’s lots of things that are going on. And the AC was referring to some of the research that groups are doing. So some of the research that was done recently, it was very instrumental in getting musicians back in school. Dr. Mark Spade and James Weaver also worked together ones. Mark is at Clemson and James Weaver works for the director. He’s the director of Performing Arts and Sports for the National Federation of State High School Associations. They got together and got research done on how COVID travels and how it’s expelled through the instruments and was able to help set up a plan to get musicians back in classrooms. They were a guest on our show and they said that it was over. There’s going to be at least two years before anybody would let them into schools to perform again and get them together. And they got them back in six months based on their research. Oh, wow. So it’s been really amazing, just understanding of understanding the aerosolization process, the close proximity of students, the secretions from brass instruments, the ventilation systems in the schools are so antiquated. All these things were brought to bear in this research. That’s been amazing stuff. So we have to give massive kudos to them because I know some many students couldn’t have lived through COVID without playing music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:11] Sure. Well, as we just mentioned, you have lots of educational resources. And you also touched on the fact that you’re involved in research on how to optimize and measure performance and other ways, like with the COVID mitigation stuff, getting kids playing again in a safe way. I think athletes in the arts gets involved in some litigation efforts when needed. You have the podcast. Tell us about the Athletes and the Arts podcast that you to co-host.
Yasi Ansari: [00:24:38] Well, want to I want to thank Steve first for it because he’s really the mastermind behind the podcast. It’s been exciting to work on the podcast and collaborate with Steve. There’s there’s been a variety of topics that are covered from vocal health to mental health to life after sports and what kind. Kinds of opportunities. You can get involved in covering people who build documentaries and and athletes who are basically performing artists in their own personal lives, but maybe performing in a different way. So they may be an athlete and may also be practicing medicine, but started off as a musician or vocalist or a dancer. So we’ve been able to cover so many great topics and provide a variety of different resources and and it’s been really exciting.
Steven Karageanes: [00:25:31] And I have to give props to Randy Dick because Randy Dick is one who pushed me to explore this. He was he was actually a competition to do iHeart Radio, I think it was, where Randy said, Is this feasible? And I said, Yeah, it’s feasible. It’s going to be some work. And like we all are, we all down for that? And so we applied for it, didn’t get it. But I was actually pretty excited by going through the process of putting it together, like, yeah, this is feasible, this is something we can do and not just a a vanity project or something like that. I think we actually can do some good with that. And so it was all Randy’s idea to push us to do that. And again, Randy is the visionary behind the whole thing, and he deserves he did a lot of work with the CSM in in NCAA research in the 90s and early 2000, a lot of surveillance, research and epidemiology research. He did amazing. His name is all over all those studies. He’s an amazing individual and he’s heart and soul of the whole organization. So he then gave us the carte blanche. And of course when I met Yazzie through the meeting, I knew right away that she needs to be on the podcast. Her voice, her intelligence, her grace. Everything is wonderful and counterbalances me very well from that perspective.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:45] I’m glad you brought up Randy too. We tried to get him to join us today and it just didn’t work out with schedules. And he said, You know what? Just go ahead with Yazzie and Stephen. They’re busy people. As long as we have this date that’s working, just go with it. So that was really gracious. That’s the kind of guy he is.
Steven Karageanes: [00:27:01] Exactly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:27:03] Well, is there anything coming up on the horizon for athletes in the arts that you want to share with us? Any new and exciting developments or initiatives that are in the works?
Steven Karageanes: [00:27:12] We’re doing some work with try and get some NIH grants going and trying to get involved with different research. We’re trying to expand research and trying to get more research going with that with that. And we’re trying to get more one page resources out for our website, more topics to cover. We’re starting to call more research in these kinds of resources from other organizations and and kind of have our website be like a station for all these types of places, other disciplines to exist together and dietary plans and nutritional concepts. Hearing loss is a big issue for all different. I mean, dance, especially hearing loss, is a completely underground kind of problem that no one really realizes because they play the music so loud when they perform all the time in rehearsals. And then we also were getting involved with trying to help get the So the United States president, Joe Biden, they have a presidential council for Performing Arts. They have people that are appointed for this and that lapsed a few years ago. He reappointed people to this council again and we’re trying to get one of our missions.
Steven Karageanes: [00:28:11] We’re hopeful over the next few years is to try to advocate for a I won’t say a czar. They use that phrase a while ago, but some sort of like key person to oversee performing arts in America, because a lot of these countries, Canada and many European countries have state wide supports, state being like the nation state for performing arts. And as we all know in schools, performing arts gets chopped down usually first whenever there’s budgetary issues. So whenever the budget is tight, they look at like music and and dance and cut those classes out when the research clearly shows that music helps the brain open up, helps the brain become more cognitively powerful. Test scores improve when music is more involved in schools and they drop when music and performing arts are cut out. So we’re hoping they advocate for, you know, having some sort of a position of power that can help administer better the resources that our country has for performing arts, because in many cases we’re behind the eight ball when it comes to competing worldwide against other countries.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:11] Well, it’s been so fascinating learning about the work that you’re doing. I love it. Well, of course, include lots of links in the show notes so that people can dig in more, learn more about athletes in the arts. Well, the links to your podcast, I’m sure a lot of listeners will want to check that out. I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical, ending a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Stephen I think you have a song or story that you’re going to close us out with today. Go ahead and run with that.
Steven Karageanes: [00:29:43] Well, essentially, I was a performing artist. I was performing at Second City Improv in the mid 2000 while working as a doctor and then started going into film. And I didn’t think I could do it. I wanted to try it. And I also had musical experience growing up. I never actually did anything with it over. The years. So once I got some software for music and tries doing my own musical scores, I wanted to see if I could write a piece of music for my tango scene that I wrote for my movie. And I started trying this and I started playing things and it came out of me. I started realizing I could do this, and I created this song amongst other songs in my in my movie. But this was the most integral piece of music. And it worked so well that my short film ended up taking me to Cannes and Monaco and LA and New York, all these different film festivals. And I started my film career that I did alongside my medical career. But more importantly, it taught me that I need as a performer myself and realize I have this passion within me. I need to have my passion feed into my work, and I need to start focusing my practice on performing arts medicine. So it was about 2007, 2008 when I wrote the song and put it in my movie, and that’s when I decided to steer away from covering sports and start covering and doing work with performing arts medicine 100% of the time.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:58] Wow, that’s quite a story. So the song that people are going to hear next, is there a name for the song?
Steven Karageanes: [00:31:03] Yeah, it’s a tango Besando El Coche Conqueror, which is basically the tango of kissing your car with your face. Basically. My, my, the story is the movie’s called American Piety, and the character is a schlub who gets hit by a car and goes to purgatory. It has to get back to Earth by deciding which religion he believes in. Out of three speed dating sessions with Buddhism, Islam and Christianity and the and the moral of the whole movie. The conclusion of it is that he can’t decide because they all have similar messages and that ends up being the answer. And that’s what brings them back to Earth.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai