(bright music) - Hey you guys about ready for the What If... shoot?

- Yeah, we're about there.

But something weird keeps happening.

- [Narrator] There was a time.

(thunder and ominous sounds) - That is weird.

- Yeah, it just keeps happening.

- [Narrator] When the local host reigned supreme.

- There it is again.

- Yeah, it's really weird.

- Maybe he's trying to tell us something, something that's about to happen.

- Maybe something later in the show?

(thunder and ominous music) (upbeat music) - How are we feeling?

- [Mike] An entrepreneur whose business is himself.

Taking robotic surgery and making it smaller.

Celebrating nerd creativity.

(upbeat music) - Yo!

What If... (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - All the world's a stage, right?

For Shakespeare, students here at Nebraska Wesleyan, and the creators featured in this episode of our series on innovation and creativity in Nebraska, What If... We start with the story of an entrepreneur whose business is being in front of an audience.

(upbeat music) For years, What If... has told you about lots of entrepreneurs who've created lots of cool things.

(jazz music) D-Wayne Taylor created himself.

(crowd cheering) - Whoa.

Let's do this thing.

Hey, what's up?

I'm D-Wayne and I'm a vocal entrepreneur.

- So what is the D-Wayne brand?

- Oh, the D-Wayne brand is vocal entrepreneurship and, you know, the focus being on forming a communicative asset, right?

I want companies or individuals to look at me and go, oh, I bet my message to my audience could go through easier if I had him.

- I want to know everything that you do as a business right now.

Just list it all.

- So I am a host slash master of ceremonies, public speaking coach, I'm a radio host, TV host, freelance commercial host, a voiceover artist and pretty sure I'm missing something.

- That's when you know you're busy, when you can't list all the things you do, right?

- Yeah.

Red 945, D-Wayne in the AM, this past Friday.

- [Mike] D-Wayne is a busy guy.

A few hours a day he's on air at a local radio station.

Also as program director.

The rest of the time he's doing a wide range of things for the business he's built for more than a decade as D-Wayne with a hyphen, by the way.

- [D-Wayne] I decided to throw the hyphen in there because everyone had a performer name and so I didn't wanna be like DJ Etch A Sketch or anything.

So I just decided to use my regular name but make it easier to pronounce.

- [Mike] So when did this all start?

- [D-Wayne] I would say this started in high school.

I was hosting pep rallies.

I was probably a junior, like 11th grade, and I really saw that people were responding well and it wasn't, I didn't felt good about being in front of an audience.

It wasn't my favorite part.

It was the fact that the audience responded.

(D-Wayne beatboxing) - [Mike] Before that there was beatboxing, something the high school freshmen on the marching band drum line with an ear for percussion and rhythm discovered and fell in love with.

(D-Wayne beatboxing) - [D-Wayne] When I first started, it was the thing, like I was Dwayne Beatbox.

(D-Wayne beatboxing) - What is beatboxing?

- Beatboxing is the art of producing the sounds using your nasal cavities, your lips, your tongue, your teeth, your vocal cords.

It's anything in your body that you're doing to produce percussive sounds.

(D-Wayne beatboxing) (D-Wayne beatboxing) (D-Wayne beatboxing) - So this may be a train wreck, but I want you to least give me a beatboxing 101 lesson.

- Oh, easy.

Let's warm up first, right?

- Yeah, so you start loosening up your arms.

-Yeah, Yeah.

- Get big.

- The other thing is to start stretching these face muscles, right?

We only talk all day and we rarely.

We rarely.

- Do I do this, too?

- Yeah, go ahead and stretch them out.

Last one, lip trills.

All right, so.

(D-Wayne trilling lips) (Mike trilling lips) There you go, yeah, because your lips aren't used to doing wild things either so now with the warm-ups done, you're ready to be a master.

- I want full control of what gets used out of this, by the way.

Right now.

(laughter) - No.

- You have three sounds.

- Okay.

- You have a kick drum, a high hat, and a snare drum.

(Mike beatboxing) - ♪ Got blood on your face, a big disgrace, ♪ ♪ waving your banner all over the place.

♪ ♪ Mike will, Mike will rock you.

♪ (Mike beatboxing) That's it.

Mike the beatboxer.

- All right man.

There we go, music.

(laughing) (D-Wayne beatboxing) (D-Wayne beatboxing) - [Mike] Back when he was just D-Wayne Beatbox, TEDx Lincoln invited him to talk about the evolution of the art form.

- [D-Wayne] So emotion's actually a huge part of it and I'll actually want a little crowd interaction here.

- [Mike] What happened afterwards was an a-ha moment for the entrepreneur.

- Thank you.

(audience applauding) - [D-Wayne] The emails I got said nothing about my noises.

Great presentation.

Would you mind coming and introducing blank, blank, blank, blank, blank?

I was like, whoa.

All those skills that I had built were the ones that got their attention, not me making all this noise.

That was my a-ha.

(D-Wayne beatboxing) - [Mike] He still beatboxes, but after UNL's Angler Entrepreneurship Program helped him hone his plan, D-Wayne grew his business.

(cheering) - Class of 2027, welcome to the University of Nebraska Lincoln.

- [Mike] His alma mater is a frequent client.

He's hosted a welcome event for new students several times.

How do you get ready for something like this?

- Oh, I take my time and sit a lot in silence first.

I really do.

I take my time in my car, you know, listen to my music, and then I turn it off and just try to focus on what I want the event to sound like and feel like.

- [Mike] Script review, a little stretching, visualizing the outcome, kind of like a golfer.

- Oh, and by the way, welcome to Nebraska.

- [Mike] And a nebulizer delivering moisture directly to the folds of tissue in the voice box that creates sound.

All part of his pre-game routine.

- Right here at Nebraska.

The part that people see me for, that's probably the last, you know, five to 10% of what I have to do.

You got a little dash for cash action happening here.

I'm with my man, Jimmy.

Brother, you are tall.

- [Mike] Do you think people understand that this level of professionalism happens with what you do for a living?

- No way.

No way.

People definitely are, like, "Do you just make that up?"

"Do you just come up with that on the spot?"

And sometimes I do and I have to, but no.

Make some noise for the UNL drum line.

- [Mike] D-Wayne has been the face and voice for some memorable things during his career.

Big things like Husker basketball and the College World Series.

Powerful things like an event helping vets transition to civilian life, but nothing like this.

(serene music) - Fans, welcome to the gorgeous Memorial Stadium for volleyball game in Nebraska.

(audience cheering) How are we feeling?

(audience cheering) And this one right here gives me goosebumps.

Nebraska is now a world record holder.

(audience cheering) For attendance at a women's sporting event.

(audience cheering) Go Big Red!

(audience cheering) - (D-Wayne) This is awesome.

(audience cheering) To feel the energy and know that everyone is happy.

Everyone's on the same page and I just get to add to it and push it a little bit.

(clapping and stadium sounds) - [Mike] D-Wayne's had offers to take an easier road, a steady job doing similar work for someone else.

He's resisted that temptation.

- [D-Wayne] Like, this is my life's work.

I think over the past probably year and a half, I've made that realization, which I've been doing it for a while.

So it's wild to think that being a master of ceremonies is actually my life's work and it feels like it.

(soft music) (saw buzzing) (saw buzzing) - [Mike] In Wesleyan's theater shop, they're busy building sets for the next production.

Across town there's a guy with a toolbox in his office who's building something that could make robotic surgery more accessible.

(soft whirling sounds) - [Shane] I like to build things.

I build a lot of things.

I build stuff at work.

When I go home at night and on the weekends I build stuff there.

So I've kind of always been that kind of guy.

- [Mike] Here's the big thing he's building now with his company Virtual Incision.

A robot surgery platform called MIRA.

Here's how it works.

This part is inserted into the patient, two arms and a camera.

- [Shane] It's like we've shrunk the surgeon down and put them inside the body.

MIRA has different instruments, graspers and scissors.

It has cautery energy so they can burn and cut at the same time and prevent bleeding.

And it really goes in there and dissects tissue and performs the tasks that are required to do surgery.

- [Mike] The surgeon operates the robot with foot pedals and hand controllers here in a mock surgical suite in the Virtual Incision office.

(upbeat music) Tell me how this works.

- Yeah, sure.

So first of all, get comfortable in the chair.

You should always be comfortable when you're using MIRA.

So we have these arm supports for your elbows.

And then I always tell people, it's like a cowboy.

You've got this two six guns.

You sit here and you have a trigger finger and you hold these sort of pistol grips.

(upbeat music) You ready to try it out?

- Yeah.

My turn trying basic tasks.

Farritor says surgeons use to learn how to use these tools.

One foot pedal is a clutch releasing the hand controllers, another moves the camera.

My hands control a grabber and a cutter.

- The 2D-3D transformations.

What's hard for civilians like you and me?

- [Mike] Eh, good start.

But unless your insides are foam tubes and pegs, you probably don't want to see me in the operating room.

The concept is similar to robotic surgery tools commonly in use for a couple decades.

The big difference, small size.

-[Shane] First of all, it's very easy to move our device from room to room.

That's kind of unheard of in the world of robotic surgery.

The fact that you can roll it into a room and set it up in just a few minutes with just one person.

The small has economic impacts, small can mean cheaper, less expensive, and that has advantages in our healthcare system obviously as well.

So really what we're focused on is just more access.

(upbeat music) - Now we're down to Wesleyan's costume library.

It's billed as the largest in the Great Plains.

There's hats and shoes and military uniforms that go all the way back to World War I, ABBA and Elvis costumes, animal suits, and this mysterious red blazer that you saw at the beginning of the show.

It's part of our next story.

How?

You'll just have to see.

(rustling crowd sounds) - [Mike] The folks here call it nerd creativity and it's all over the place.

So there's gonna be lots of fun stories for us to tell, including the folks who create costumes and dress up as pop culture characters.

They're everywhere.

(upbeat music) Maybe that's why something just doesn't feel right.

(upbeat music) I think I need some help.

So we turn to superstar cosplayer, Amanda Fehlner.

- What If... - [Mike] So what is cosplay?

- Cosplay, the word itself, comes from two words.

It's costume play and that's really what it all boils down to.

That's the point.

It's dressing up in a costume to have fun.

I guess I've always been into costumes.

Halloween was my favorite holiday, of course, as a child and it was for the costume component.

I didn't really care that much about the candy and that's still true actually.

(adventurous music) - [Mike] Amanda's definitely got a thing about collecting nerdy pop culture stuff.

- [Amanda] As you can see, I do enjoy collecting some things.

- You've got, there's like a tiny little bit of shelf space I think up above.

- Yeah, I still have some space.

(spray hissing) - [Mike] She also has a theater degree, has done professional costume design, and works at a craft store running quilt machines, a perfect fit for cosplay.

She likes translating animated characters into real life but has created a wide range of costumes and won best in show a few times since she got started.

So in 12 years, any guess how many different characters you've created for yourself?

- It's actually probably around 40 at this point.

- So what's the hardest one you've ever had to do?

- [Amanda] Oh, man.

A character from the cartoon Gargoyles.

Her name's Demona and she is a gargoyle.

So she has wings and she has a tail and she has, they're not quite stilts, but they're like elevated platform shoe things that I had to build.

So she had a lot of components that were pretty challenging.

- Now she faces her greatest challenge.

Me.

- It will work.

- Okay, so we already talked about what I'm gonna be.

How do we get there?

- Alright, so I think we need to do a little bit of work.

- [Mike] What do we do with the hair?

- [Amanda] Just came out of the package, we need to trim it down a little.

- And this is kind of rare, most of the time you're making your own stuff.

- Yeah, usually, or with wigs, I often have to purchase one and modify it to the right thing because I'm usually doing some sort of strange cartoon.

- This is like a strange cartoon, and this will hold me for a few days?

- Yeah, you should be pretty good.

First step, I just want to see, and it's really not bad actually.

(adventurous music) - My hair used to be this color.

What's that doing?

- So that's trimming down the actual hair part of this middle piece without just giving it a straight cut.

- Can I try it for a second?

- Sure.

(adventurous music) I do have a practice, yeah.

- Is the detailed part the fun part?

- It can be sometimes or sometimes I'm like, ah.

- Stop.

- Why do I care this much about this little piece?

But that's just me.

- Am I gonna be able to eat with this thing on?

- Just a little bit that we did but it's a lot more realistic.

- Ready?

- Yes.

I think you're ready.

- Here we go.

(finger snap) -What do you think?

- I think you look great.

- Well, thank you so much for your help.

- Of course.

- We're off.

- We are.

- Yep, I've become Ron Burgundy from the movie Anchorman.

(board thwacks) (crowd chattering) - Mike, you have a story to tell.

- Are you sure?

- Do it.

It's a story you were born to tell.

(nature sounds) ♪ That we see what we wanna see ♪ ♪ Wanna see ♪ ♪ Most people live a fantasy ♪ ♪ A fantasy ♪ ♪ Dark dreams, stark reality ♪ ♪ Money, clothes, women, cars, cars ♪ ♪ All the things that make you a star ♪ ♪ Insecurity and ego too far ♪ ♪ I'm pretty sure you don't ♪ ♪ even know who you are ♪ - Now Ron Burgundy and team are off in search of creators.

♪ a dark dream, stark reality ♪ - Hello, Kasper.

Can I talk to you for Channel 4 News?

- Of course.

(board thwack) (upbeat music) I am an artist and I do comics, merchandise, concept art, freelance stuff like that.

I've been a drawing ever since I was two, so it's been a long time and I know I also love anime.

I'm a video games, coffee, cat, all kinds of stuff, so.

(upbeat music) - [Mike] Tell me about like one of these, one of these your favorite?

- I think out of these I like that one the best because he's a villain of the series so he's a lot of fun to draw.

- [Mike] Kind of dark and ominous and a little, yeah, there's a lot going on back there, so.

- Which I tend to like.

- Cool.

(Kasper laughs) (electric music) - I'm kind of a big deal.

- A big deal?

(electric music) I'd say about an medium type deal.

(electric music) - What are you working on now?

- [Andy] This is from Metroid: Zero Mission.

- [Mike] Which is?

- [Andy] From the Game Boy Advance.

It's a Metroid action adventure game.

It's a remake of the original Metroid from the mid-Eighties and it's one of my favorite games of all time.

I love the Metroid games.

(board thwacks) The idea is that I am effectively recreating the look and the aesthetic of pixel art from classic video games.

I'm of the age where, I mean, most of my childhood was effectively defined by this stuff.

I ended up working with computers for a living, working with data for a living, and I largely thank my career today due to the fact that I've just always had an interest in technology and that is largely due to the fact that I was exposed to video games at a very young age.

- [Mike] So how did you get started creating paintings with this old school retro video game?

- [Andy] Great question.

I don't even really have a good answer for that.

I don't have any artistic background.

- Talk about the process.

- The process is I take a T-square and I grid the entire thing out in pencil.

I go with quarter-inch pixels.

It's just a unit of measurement that I'm comfortable with.

So I grid it out, grid it out like a graph paper, and then I just kind of peel it apart color by color.

I'm making sort of a mustardy yellow.

I tend to try to invent these things in the fly.

Like I know this is Boring Mustard, so it's BM, and I'll just come in here, give it a label in there, and if I need to figure out where that color goes, I can just hide or show the layer and keep it kind of selected and as I peel them apart I can see what's left and see what I haven't gotten to yet.

- You know, you look at it here, it doesn't look like anything.

- [Andy] You zoom out, you squint a little bit.

- You got it.

- It's funny 'cause I'm this far away from it when I'm working on it and it just looks like nothing.

And then I stand up when I'm done and I take a look at it and it's like, okay.

(upbeat music) What I do is a little bit off the beaten path and most people haven't seen it before.

So I get a chance to talk to people about it, which is cool.

(laughing) (upbeat music) - How's it going?

- You look like Ron Burgundy, man, that's awesome.

(board thwack) (funky music) I work in marketing during the day, so this is a side gig.

Definitely hit quite a few events a year.

But yeah, I just do it when the kids go to sleep.

- Talk about your stuff.

- [Matt] Each of these is made from about four to 10 layers of the cut paper and they're stacked so there's some shading that's gonna occur in the dark.

They have a different look to them.

That's kind of one of the things I like about them is there's really two looks to them One in the daylight and then one in a darker environment, so.

- [Mike] Do you have a background in origami or light boxes or any of this kind of stuff?

- [Matt] No, no, not really.

I have kind of a fascination with lamps and lights and things like that.

So kind of worked out.

I definitely enjoy like, you know, nerdy stuff.

So that's where I like to make.

Also animals, some scenic stuff.

But really, yeah, I gravitate towards nerdier stuff.

It's just kind of my wheelhouse.

You know, superheroes, that type of thing.

This is actually the first one I made.

- Oh, that's the one you made for your daughter.

- Yeah, for my daughter.

So it's pretty simple but just enjoy that because of the memories that, you know, her enjoying it.

- The Star Wars one back here looks pretty complicated.

- [Matt] Yeah, it's pretty intense.

A lot of this is, actually, that owl there, that's a lot of hand cutting, that one took a lot of work.

But I enjoyed the design of that one because it has a couple layers to it, so.

(funky music) - [Mike] Best costume you've seen so far?

- I don't even know what it was.

It was like an Egyptian kind of look to it, like bejeweled.

It was awesome.

- Not Ron Burgundy?

- Actually, you were leading me.

You were leading me.

Yeah, I should've known.

(funky music) - But you smell like rich mahogany.

(funky music) I immediately regret this decision.

(funky music) Do you want to talk to Channel 4 News San Di-ah-go?

(crowd chatter) (board thwack) (soft music) - [Liz] I've been tatting for 13 years and that's my thing that I do.

(soft music) - [Mike] So how'd you get started doing this?

- [Liz] I saw a pair of barefoot sandals on Etsy that I fell in love with but I couldn't afford.

Now I know why.

Because of that I went to my local library and they had a book there that came with a DVD.

Even with that it took me a week just to do my first successful stitch.

But I stuck with it.

(soft music) - [Mike] And this is kind of an old school form of art, right?

It dates back to when?

- Victorian era.

That's why I started working with the cameos just 'cause they were the same era and then I kind of expanded slowly into I am a horror movie fan.

So I found more horror related cameos, images, things like that.

(soft music) My favorite piece is this one.

So this one I actually designed.

I think this one has like 10,000 knots in it, maybe.

- 10,000?

- Yeah, knots.

And so this is a really complicated piece.

It takes two shuttles instead of just one.

- What's a shuttle?

- So this is a shuttle and actually I'll give you guys a short little demo here.

- Okay.

(soft music) - Could I try that with the?

- You wanna try tatting?

- Yeah.

- And then go around and wrap it around your pinky.

- Okay, really tight here.

So hold it like this.

Flip it over and I wrap.

- So just wrap it just so it goes around your hand.

Yeah.

Bring the tension back up on your thread so that it's tight.

- Like this?

- Yeah.

And you'll go over top of this green thread.

Put the back of the shuttle underneath.

So close your hand up.

And we're gonna pull and now you can open your hand back up and there you go.

You made a knot.

- That's one knot.

- That's one knot.

- Out of probably another thousand I need to make.

So can I tat a new mustache?

'Cause this mustache is.

- So there is actually a tatter who makes mustaches that you can stick on.

(soft music) Anything that you see on my table is something that I love.

What I tell people is that's how I feed my inner magpie.

I'm able to go, oh, I like this, I like this, I like this.

And then throw, send it out to the world.

(soft music) (funky music) - You're so wise.

Like a miniature Buddha with hair.

(funky music) - He's in cosplay.

I love it.

- Ah, how's it going?

- Good.

(board thwack) (upbeat music) And these blowing up right now on my Etsy because it's really close to Shark Week.

(upbeat music) Music was what I'm trained in.

I taught music for a while.

Now I split my time between teaching music privately and this sculpting that I do.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) I got into sculpting 'cause I saw one of those videos that pop up on Facebook and it was like a demo.

Someone making something out of polymer clay.

And it's like, I really like doing this, and I kind of kept doing it.

So I'm a big fan of Japanese anime, so I love when I get to do anime things.

And my favorite things to make are these little chibi figures.

Chibi means like cute so they have like really big heads and big googly eyes.

These are hermit crab rangoons.

So this is my own design.

And I airbrushed.

- Can I see that for a second?

- Yeah.

- I airbrushed the rangoon to try and look like fried.

- Thanks for stopping by.

-Yeah, I'm just working on keeping my mustache on.

It's a struggle.

Definitely a struggle.

(funky music) Stay classy.

(funky music) - It matches.

- [Mike] Look who else we found.

Cosplay expert Amanda.

I wouldn't be Ron Burgundy without her.

What are you cosplaying?

- So this is Cheetara.

It's a character from Thundercats from, you know, the Eighties.

(laughing) But I really enjoy doing kind of classic cartoons and this one has been on my list for a really long time.

The wig especially was a little tricky.

It's got a bit of body paint happening, so that took a while.

And then fingernails are the claws.

- Oh my gosh.

That looks dangerous.

- They're not too bad.

(soft music) - [Mike] How you feeling wearing that right now?

- Oh, it's fun.

I am very happy to be indoors in the air conditioning.

- Wigs are hot.

- Yes, yes.

Wigs can definitely be hot.

- As a non-wig wearer, so.

(crowd chatter) Just talk about the whole vibe of this place.

- [Amanda] It's a very positive and happy and creative atmosphere and people are excited to be here.

They're excited to be in cosplay.

They're excited to look at all the of the neat stuff that vendors have.

- It's like a big family reunion.

- It is.

Yes it is.

But a family you want to go see.

(soft music) (soft music) - [Mike] What is nerd creativity?

- [Amanda] I mean, it's just applying your creativity to nerdy sorts of things.

- You get ideas and you can just like feel the energy from people that are making things that they love.

- You know, I feel like it comes from a passion.

- [Matt] I enjoy it and I think a lot of other people enjoy it.

And I think now, you know, it's more celebrated than it has been in the past.

- [Liz] When you get to be around your tribe it just really helps you feel like, okay, yeah, this is great.

There are other people that are like me.

We're all kind of, you know, weird oddballs.

(upbeat music) - So did we pull this off?

- Oh, I think it's great.

(upbeat music) - Gosh.

Yes.

I've bombarded with movie lines.

- [Amanda] I love it.

- [Mike] It's been funny.

- [Amanda] So do you understand then, like, part of the draw of cosplay?

It's fun getting that sort of interaction from people.

- [Mike] It is.

I guess I didn't really think about it that way.

But yeah, people are shouting out like Anchorman lines and stuff like that, so it is kind of fun.

- Part of why I like it.

(laughing) (upbeat music) - [Mike] And that's where our story ends.

We discovered a lot of nerd creativity (upbeat music) and just maybe a nerdy host discovered his true self.

(upbeat music) You stay classy, Nebraska.

I am Mike Tobias?

(upbeat music) Here's a cool creative thing built specially for this theater.

These lights represent what some famous Shakespeare lines look like digitally.

Kind of like what Emily sees when she's editing audio.

So when we say, to be or not to be, that's what it looks like.

Or, all the world's a stage.

(upbeat music) Well, thanks for watching this episode of What If... You can check out all of our episodes, our stories, and our educational pieces online and learn about the original music we feature in all of those stories.

And follow us on social media, #WhatIfNebraska.

(upbeat music) Thanks for watching, but before we go, we've got one more little Anchorman nugget for you.

(adventurous music) - [Narrator] What If..., with four time Emmy award-winning host Ron Burgundy, oh, Mike Tobias, with videographer and editor, Justin Cheney, (adventurous music) audio engineer, Emily Kreutz, (adventurous music) graphic artist, Lisa Craig, (adventurous music) and your finishing editor, Ian Edgington.

(adventurous music) What If..., on Nebraska Public Media.

(adventurous music) (upbeat music) - Help, help.

(crowd muttering) (whacking sounds) - [Female] Hit it again, you got it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)