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You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief, I’m Eric Molinsky. And you can tell from the title of this episode, “The Westworld Experience,” I’m talking about Westworld, so as usual – spoilers ahead.

If you haven’t watched the show, but you would like to know what it’s about it, the basic premise is that in the future there’s a Wild West theme park where the guests can interact with androids called “hosts.” But the hosts don’t know they’re not human. They think they exist in the Old West.

Eventually, it’s revealed that Westworld is actually one of a many parks of different themed-worlds. But the main focus is this Wild West world, where the guests are encouraged to do anything they want to the hosts because the hosts may feel pain or pleasure in the moment, but afterward they’re brought back to the shop, their memories are wiped clean, their bodies are fixed up, and they’re sent back out to interact with different guests, having no idea what happened to them.

Or at least that’s the way Westworld had been working for decades until the first episode, when a few of the hosts suddenly started accessing old memories that should’ve been deleted. As the hosts slowly become self- aware -- they have a lot of questions, to say the least. And eventually, they’re just really pissed off.

Now to promote season 2, HBO built the town of Sweetwater – the fake Western town in Westworld – just outside the South by Southwest festival this Spring. And they hired actors to play the androids – not the android characters from the show played by famous stars, but new characters that the guests at the festival could interact with.

This interactive theatrical exhibit was the buzz at South by Southwest. Even the stars of Westworld, like Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden went through it -- not as their characters but as themselves.

CLIP: It’s pretty crazy, like being on set, it’s a whole Wild West town, etc.

That is the voice of Thandie Newton, who is sitting on the couch with them during this interview. She also plays an android on the show. But unlike the other two actors, she didn’t go through this live theatrical version of Westworld and she was really curious about it. 2

CLIP: I’d love to interview the actors whether they were asked anything uncomfortable because WW is pretty strange.

I wondered about that too. So I talked with a few of the actors.

And it turns out what there was a problem with some of the guests being inappropriate with the actors. But I’ll get to that later. Because overall, the actors told me the project was one of the best projects they worked on in their careers.

And it was not like being an actor on the TV series. Those actors take breaks – sometimes in the TV series, those actors take breaks, sometimes long breaks as they setting up a next shot. But the actors in the live theatrical show of Westwrold had to be in character for days. The actress Liz Waters played one of the hosts.

LIZ: I woke up the next morning and I just I almost couldn't remember how to be me. I couldn't remember like what it really was that I was supposed to be doing right then. And like I mean I was in a complete brain fog for about two days. The world that I had lived in for the last six days wasn't my world anymore. And that's how involved everyone was.

The audition process was really secretive. The actors were told they were auditioning for a theatrical show called “Pride of Texas.” They were all petty shocked when they found out what it really was.

They spent several days developing their characters with the show’s director David Wally – and figuring out what their relationships were to all the other hosts in town. They ran through it once with friends and family playing the guests. Then it was show time.

Now the guests were people who just happened to be at South by Southwest. They were brought in just like the guests were on the TV show. First they got debriefed at the fictional corporation Delos – which looked exactly as it did on the TV show. Then the guests got on a train, and it was the actual train from the set of Westworld, which they brought in.

And they took it until they reached the town of Sweetwater, which they set up just outside Austin. 3

LIZ: And they set it up that way so that right when you came out of the train it was literally all you could see was this world for you and you couldn't see anything else so they blocked the rest of it with trees. So it's like even outside of that seeing as how it was like a town outside of Austin there's like a tree like an actual train behind us that some houses over there but you couldn't see any of that.

Now because this happened at South by Southwest, there were a lot of celebrities among the guests

Alan Nelson played one of the hosts, and he says he’ll never forget Steven Spielberg’s reaction when Spielberg stepped off the train into Sweetwater.

ALAN: Let me tell you to see Steven Spielberg who of course is just part of everybody's mental landscape get blown away by something that that was quite amazing. And he asked me who's the director? And of course you never break character. And I go well I don't know what you mean by that but we have a traveling hypnotist in town who seems to be able to charm us into saying or doing anything he wants to and his name is David Wally.

David Wally of course was their director.

Liz Waters says she was totally star struck, but the fun part was that her discovered that her character, a judgmental schoolteacher, turned out to be a really good vehicle to tease all these famous people.

Her favorite moment was with Jeffrey Wright, who plays one of the company employees on the TV show.

LIZ: Yeah, Jeffrey Wright was one of the people I called out for imbibing the devil’s liquor. I said sir you going enjoying the devil's liquor this evening? I do hope you are doing so in moderation. And he was like oh of course ma'am of course and like when each man does have his own path that's all just the lead and virtue and family of course and he's just like pointed at me and was like are you hearing this right now?

But the celebrity they actually they had the most fun with was Elijah Wood – who was just at South By Southwest promoting something else. Alan actually gave Elijah Wood a message to send to another host in town. 4

ALAN: And he immediately said yeah, yeah, I'll do that. And I say if you would go see Miss Jocelyn over the Coronado and tell her while I have pondered her invitation most carefully for the last several days, and it did make me blush a bit, that I have finally reached a decision, if you would tell her that Silent Alan has said says yes, he does accepted that invitation and we'll see her tonight. And he goes yes Miss Jocelyn, at Coronado, I’ll do it.

But when Elijah Wood went looking for Miss Jocelyn, he saw a Wanted posters made up by the staff with his picture on it saying, “Wanted: For stealing a ring.” This is of course was a Lord of the Rings reference.

LIZ: And so I guess he was walking by the sheriff and the sheriff was like you! And he like looked over and saw his picture and he just took off running.

Elijah Wood was chased around town until he found Miss Jocelyn.

ALAN: Elijah says oh by the way Miss Jocelyn, Silent Alan says that he has considered your invitation and we'll see you tonight. You know that blew her away.

Now there were other things to do at the Westworld Experience. You could eat, drink, watch a shoot-out or solve mysteries in this sort of interactive game. But the big draw were the actors playing the hosts. And Liz Waters, says the guests just kept trying to get the actors to break character.

LIZ: And if they asked you questions or tried to show you their cell phone or something you didn’t understand as a host, you would say, it doesn’t look like anything to me.

Another thing that happened all the time is that the guests would say to the hosts, “freeze all motor functions!” But on the show, only the lab employees of the Delos Corporation have that power to do that, so I don’t know why the guests thought they’d have that power there.

And there were actors playing Delos technicians, wearing the red and white hazmat suits that we see on the TV show, going up to the actors playing androids and saying, freeze all motor functions.

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LIZ: And I think one of them told me I'm going to implant a memory from when you were eight years old and your grandmother brought you a batch of strawberries and then she'll be like increasing friendliness by 25 percent. One of my favorite moments was the very final scene. They said freeze all motor functions for every single host. And I remember there was a guy standing next to me and he's like filming it like points the camera right at me. He's like oh my gosh they're all frozen. Oh my gosh look at her. Oh my gosh she's frozen and his friend had to be like dude she can still hear you! Like he always had to be told that no! She's not really a robot!

In a way, the actors were almost too good at convincing everyone else that they were robots. Because remember Westworld is a place where you can do whatever you want to these robots without judgment. And this live interactive show at South by Southwest was advertised with the slogan: “live without limits.” So people started behaving that way.

I heard stories of guests that verbally abused the actors. I heard about a guest who kept trying to kiss the saloon girls on the mouth.

ALAN: One guy came in drunk you know started asking about different clues and then started to shove me as one point shoved me very hard. And so with the adrenaline that rushes three in such a moment that I grabbed his arm and pinch down on the nerve that Shin your upper arm. And you can see you can see his eyes pop open and you see the thoughts just flooding through. Go on. Oh shit. This really is a robot.

One guest actually stole a gun – a prop gun -- from one of the hosts. But that host was not just an actor, he was a professional stuntman.

ALAN: You know that was a mistake. You don't mess with the stunt man. They handled themselves extremely well.

LIZ: And you kind of see the fear in this guy's eyes. He immediately regretted that decision of taking someone's gun. Like he thought it’d be funny or whatever like oh look I got the gun it's a world without limits. Ha ha! It's funny. But they're no they're going to react the way that their real human reaction will be it would be like get your hands off my gun.

The actress Courtney Rose Kline played a host, but her character was more vulnerable than the characters that Liz and Alan played. And it was 6 frustrating to Courtney because she couldn’t scold a guest like Liz’s character, or be intimidating like Alan’s character.

COURTNEY: Like there’s one lady who came up with a camera and another one who’s interesting and she was like do you feel like you’re alive? She was like, you realize you’re not alive, right? And it’s like what kind of stupid question is that?

But she couldn’t say that. She was also horrified as she watched many of the guests trash the general store. And she felt really bad for the actress playing the storeowner.

COURTNEY: Literally there were people stealing potatoes that were in her store, at one point someone opened a bag of sugar and put their hands in it and she was like why are you doing that? And she was like, I wanted to see if it was real. She was like you’re going to have to pay me for that, and she was like, I don’t have any money, and her boyfriend ended up paying for that and she ended up carrying a five pound bag of sugar across the whole Sweetwater.

Now Courtney did have some very nice interactions with the guests. In fact, one guest was so invested in her back-story that tried to solve her personal issues with the other hosts. Unfortunately, the guy didn’t realize that the actors were on story loops and when the story loops reset, the actors had to pretend remember him, and all his work resolving their conflicts was undone.

COURTNEY: Part of me wants to tell him, it’s okay. Thank you.

But she couldn’t break character.

So that was sweet, and a little sad, but overall, Courtney says was disappointed by how many of the guests didn’t care about the backstories the actors had developed. They just wanted to get drunk and rowdy.

She actually set up a system with one of the actors playing a lab technician so if a guest was ever harassing her, the lab tech would freeze all motor functions and pretty much tinker with her until the offensive guest went away.

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COURTNEY: Because the first night I literally had people trying to grab me by the skirt, really a moment that disturbed me that they were somewhere else during the first loop because the second loops, a group of older men come up to me and say, we hear you like older man, do you mind if I could be your daddy for the night? And I’m like oh my God! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

But those are exceptions. Overall, the actors said the guests were great – the whole thing was a lot of fun.

But the amazing to me is was how much those negative experiences reflected what happens to characters on the TV show. I mean it’s not the same -- obviously the guests are not murdering the hosts as they do the on TV show. But the fact that people were acting so disrespectfully in real life was even more disturbing to me.

But this whole thing actually touches on the central questions that Westworld, the TV show, has been asking since the beginning. Questions like you know who you are? I mean do you really know how you would behave in any situation? And if the answer is no, and you go looking for your true self -- how do you know when you’ve found it?

But there’s one philosophical puzzle that I always think about when I watch Westworld. And this a philosophical debate that’s been going on for centuries that I think gets to the heart of these questions around identity, and how we see ourselves, versus how the world sees us.

Philosophy class will begin just after the break.

>> BREAK

Okay, so we’re going to switch gears here and get very meta because Westworld is a very meta TV show. I mean it’s a story about characters in a story that discover that they’re characters in a story. And that’s lead to a lot of think pieces online about different philosophical debates Westworld taps into.

But when it comes the question of identity that the characters are struggling with – the question of “what makes you, you?”-- I keep thinking about this old philosophical debate, which I’ve always found really fascinating: The Ship of Theseus. 8

I’ve heard two versions of this. The first one is that Theseus sailed around ancient Greece for about 30 years, and throughout his travels, he kept replacing the planks on his ship. By the time he returned to Athens, not a single piece of wood was the same.

The other version of the story is that his travels were so legendary, the people of Athens erected his ship as a monument in the town square. But as time went on, the wood rotted, they kept replacing the wood, until not a single plank was the same.

Either way, the question is if you replace every plank of wood in the Ship of Theseus – is it still the same ship? And if not, when was the tipping point when it stopped being the ship of Theseus and what is it now?

NOSON: The main point is the ship of Theseus has nothing to do with ships, it’s about everything.

Noson Yanofsky is a professor at Brooklyn College who’s written about this philosophical paradox.

NOSON: For example, it’s about a college, what makes a college a college? After all every 30 or 40 years all the professors leave every four or five years or six years, all the students leave you know a college can move or something like that. Or what makes the New York Yankees the New York Yankees? They've been around for about 120, 130 years. Their owners have changed the players have changed the fans have changed. Yankee Stadium has moved. Yeah well it's funny because I'm from Boston… NOSON: You're angry at us Yankees -- Always, but it's funny because the rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox has been kind of dormant for a while, but they’re the best teams in the league again and then they got into this brawl at Fenway Park this year, and everyone's like, “Aw! They still hate each other!” And I'm like who's they? NOSON: Who’s they? Right. It's not the same people it's not the same players. And again it's not even the same fans. Why is it the same thing? Yeah.

And of course the real reason people are interested in this idea is that it plays out with people. I mean the cells in our body are constantly dying and 9 being replaced. In fact, every seven years, your body is made up of completely new cells that did not exist seven years ago -- you are literally not the same person you were seven years ago. So what does that mean? Should a jail sentence only be seven years because it wasn’t you that committed the crime?

NOSON: Seven years should be the length of a jail sentence or if you bought a car. OK maybe it shouldn't belong to you after seven years because you are not you. By the way this is where the seven-year itch comes from in a marriage. No. Just kidding! It’s not me. I didn’t marry you.

And on the show Westworld, this plays out literally.

Take Dolores, who is played by Evan Rachel Wood. She’s one of the oldest androids at the park. Every single part of her has replaced over and over again. Her storylines have changed -- her personality has changed. And now that she’s becoming self-aware, she’s trying to figure out who the “real” Dolores is. It certainly wasn’t the original version of her, so is it the version of Dolores she thinks she is now, or the version she’s evolving into?

CLIP: DOLORES

Or take Maeve, who is another host played by Thandie Newton. When we first meet her, Maeve is this no nonsense madam at a saloon.

CLIP: MAEVE

But then she remembers one of her previous storylines when she was a homesteader, with a young daughter. After eventually Maeve becomes obsessed with finding that girl – even though that girl may not even remember her.

CLIP: SHE’S NOT YOUR DAUGHTER

Kim Engels teaches philosophy at Molloy College.

KIM: That seemed to be something constant that that kind of held her together. You know her or her self was kind of anchored that way. And her first independent decision is to kind of value the possibility of reuniting with her 10 daughter over the certainty of her escape and I think that shows that you know these experiences with her daughter whether they were fabricated or not are like a very key part to who she is and kind of anchor her together.

James South teaches philosophy at Marquette University. He and Kim both contributed to a book called The Philosophy of Westworld.

JAMES: Yeah and I think that's important because I think when we start thinking about Ship of Theseus examples in terms of human beings one of the key things that holds human beings together over time despite the you know in my case my hair turning from brown to gray and my gaining some weight and looking very different than I liked when I was five. I have memories of when I was five and that angers me to myself as it were.

So that’s one answer to the Ship of Theseus quandary. Forget the body. What makes us, us, is our minds, and our memories.

But people’s personalities can change after traumatic events, or if they have amnesia, or Alzheimer’s. I mean, for example, my grandmother. She had a really biting, sarcastic sense of humor – which I thought was hilarious when I was a kid. But when she developed Alzheimer’s, she became very sweet and childlike. She was actually very happy in that state of mind, but it was heartbreaking because she didn’t feel like my Nana anymore.

Kim says, it doesn’t matter if my grandmother was sarcastic or sweet. She was always my Nana because I was always her grandson. Those are facts that could not be changed.

KIM: Because I think who you are is not just it involves your relationships with other people and kind of how you relate to others. And I think those are part of your core essence. And I think if you still have those relationships even if they're different you're still going to have those ties. I think you can still say that they're the same person.

And so that’s another answer to the ship of Theseus. You’re not your mind or your body. What makes you, you, is your function in life. Going back to Westworld, Dolores will always be an android. That will always define her relationship to human beings, whether she’s serving their needs or killing them in cold blood. 11

As Kim put it, this your core essence.

JAMES: Knowing what I know about Kim hearing her say the word core essence is very strange to me. Wait, why?! JAMES: She wrote it because your dissertation on Sartre and Sartre doesn’t believe in core essence! KIM: Actually he does believe! He does think there is something constant which he calls facticity and he says those are things about yourself that you can't change he says you know where you're born things like what James called the origin. You know who your parents are. He says those things you can't change. So like you do have an essence to that extent of what you know Sartre says. You know you have facticity there is something that roots you as you. But what really makes you, you, in Sartre's ideas is kind of what you do and kind of what your function is and kind of what purpose you have towards what goals you direct your behavior. And that can change.

But Westworld has thrown many another curve balls in there because it turns out the hosts are not accessing their old deleted memories by accident. Someone has been tinkering with their programming.

Maeve cannot believe this, even when she’s given evidence by Jeffrey Wright’s character Bernard, who oversees the maintenance of the hosts.

CLIP: WESTWORLD

Noson Yanofsky says this question of whether the hosts are acting out of free will or following a script also reflects the way we behave every day life.

NOSON: Are we programmed to have certain beliefs or are we programmed to think certain things? I don’t know, my mother programed me to you know help little old ladies cross the streets when I was younger. So when I help a little old lady cross the street now am I doing what I wanted to do or am I preprogram to do it. Do I forget it forget about Dolores which is a fictional character. Do I have free will? I always like it there's an – on Ave J on Brooklyn there's a there's a bakery that makes the most delicious Cinnamon Danish. OK and I have this two opposing feelings. On the one hand I really wanted cinnamon Danish. On the other hand I'm health conscious and I don't want to eat too much. OK so let's say 12

I walk away from the bakery without getting the cinnamon Danish. Did I win? Which part of me won? I'm not one person. Right the question is who is me? NOSON: Who was me?

Now this question, “who is me?” is at the heart of another debate in a totally different science fiction universe. And this may seem like a tangent from Westworld, but it does tie directly back to these kinds of questions.

It’s a philosophical debate that’s been happening among Star Trek fans around the transporter.

When Captain Kirk is on a planet, and he says, “Scotty, beam me up” – Scotty is atomizing Captain Kirk. The James T. Kirk that materializes back on the Enterprise is a copy of the Captain Kirk that was on the planet. And if Kirk is beaming around the galaxy in almost every episode, are we really following the adventures of the same character? A lot of Star Trek fans say so. They even came up with a name for the transporter room. They call it the suicide box. But James South and Kim Engels don’t see it that way.

JAMES: I would point back to the role of memory because the captain Kirk materializes on a planet from the enterprise might be physically a different Captain Kirk, but he has all the memories of Captain Kirk. I mean come into play with the ship of Theseus metaphor as well in terms of the idea that you know there are little deaths that happen in your life. You know that you sort of can be resurrected from or that you just keep going and turning into something that's different but the same? KIM: Yeah actually this idea of little deaths I think that you can bring that back to William and the Man in Black.

Kim is referring back to Westworld. On the show, The Man in Black is an investor in the park, played by Ed Harris, who goes around hunting robots for sport and trying to uncover mysteries left behind by the park designers.

CLIP: MAN IN BLACK

But we learn in a series of flashbacks, that the Man in Black used to be an earnest young man named William, played by the actor Jimmi Simpson. And so the show has been exploring how William evolved into this grizzled, vicious Man in Black. And sometimes they really feel like two different 13 characters, and only thing they have in common is fact that the Man in Black remembers having been this young compassionate guy.

KIM: You know when he says that you know out there among the dead I found he found something else himself. So I think when you have what Sartre calls an existential rupture actually part of you kind of dies and in terms of it's not there anymore you know you're so changed. So I don't know if any of you have had really like formative life experiences but sometimes you go through something and you're just like never the same after that happens. You can kind of almost categorize your life into a before and after.

Which brings me back to Star Trek because Star Trek has had a number of episodes exploring the philosophical ramifications of the transporter. My favorite example is an episode called Second Chances from the Next Generation. We learn that Commander Will Riker has a doppelganger. Years ago, he had beamed down to a desolate planet, and when he came back, the transporter accidentally created a version of him on that planet, and a version of him that left the planet. And the two Rikers evolved to become very different people based on their circumstances.

CLIP: NEXT GENERATION

But what I find so interesting about this episode is the only thing that makes us, the audience, believe that the Riker we’ve been following on the show all these years is the “real” Riker and not a copy of Riker – is the fact that everybody on the Enterprise thinks of him as the real Riker.

And Noson Yanofsky thinks that’s the answer to this puzzle of Ship of Theseus.

NOSON: Well what makes something? And the answer is we make it. In other words we, human beings -- the Yankees don't really exist. You know we human beings say the Yankees exist. We agree to it. You're from Boston so you hate us. I was about to say, I wish they didn’t! NOSON: (Laughs) Right, but you know we kind of you know the Yankees are you'll excuse the expression a social construct is something that society decides what the Yankees are. Same thing with the Ship of Theseus. Now you know we decided this is the ship and if it looks like the ship and if we gradually change parts of the ship, it's still the ship.

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In other words, you are who you say you are.

If the rest of the world doesn’t agree with you – well, that’s another issue.

But again that is his answer. This is a philosophical quandary that philosophers have been debating for centuries. And Westworld is not presenting any simple answers either.

But the amazing thing to me about Westworld is how it’s spawned all these philosophical debates online, that I don’t think people would be having if they weren’t watching the show or taking a philosophy class in college.

And I think what it taps into is that we have these story loops that we create for ourselves in our own lives, going through the motions. And every so often, it’s good to stop and reflect whether this is the version of you that you really want to be. And it’s easy. All you have to do is, “freeze all motor functions.”

That’s it for this week, thank you for listening. Special thanks to Alan Nelson, Dan Trippen, Liz Waters, Courtney Rose Kline, Noson Yanofsky, Kim Engels, James South and Kyle Sullivan.

Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply network. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emolinsky and imagin worlds pod. You can help support the show by donating on Patreon or GoFundMe. You’ll find links on my site imaginary worlds podcast dot org.