I host solo.
With Joel Warner (Post on Wired) You’ve seen it on Mad Men: The agency’s creative staff whiles away the noon hour with a liquid lunch of Old Fashioneds, then pops back into the office and whips off a whimsical Lucky Strike ad campaign that gets the masses chomping at the bit for tobacco sticks. […]
More about my trip to Los Angeles. (Previously posted at Humor Code) Here at the Humor Code world headquarters, we’ve long struggled with the concept of stand-up comedy. Of all the types of humor to study, it’s likely the most obvious, the most discussed, the most written about, the most filmed. Folks far more experienced […]
As part of my Humor Code project, I am headed to Los Angeles to examine comedy on stage… Here is a glimpse of some of the things Joel Warner and I are going to do: -Attend Comedy Meltdown at the Nerdist Theater. -Tour Hollywood’s Comedy Store -Attend the Neal Brennan Show at the Westside […]
With Joel Warner (Cross posted on The Humor Code’s Psychology Today blog) With the holidays upon us, we’re taking a break from deconstructing what makes things funny and instead pondering the tradition that is Thanksgiving. We’re not talking about gathering with friends and family to express gratitude for what we have been provided. We’re referring […]
In a previous post, I suggested that a joke can be deemed “too late” (as opposed to “too soon”) if a lot of time has passed since the event being joked about. A more common reason that a joke can be seem irrelevant is when the audience doesn’t understand the context of the joke – […]
With Joel Warner (Cross posted on The Humor Code’s Psychology Today blog) Some of civilization’s great thinkers pondered the meaning of humor long and hard. Thomas Hobbes put forth the idea that humor emerges from superiority or “sudden glory” over an enemy. Immanuel Kant believed humor arose from a process of incongruity in which a […]
Power (or a lack thereof) has pervasive effects on human behavior and thought. We know, for example, that in contrast to the powerless, the powerful are more likely to take action, less likely to empathize with others, and more likely to be goal-directed in their behavior. But power is often not an either-or state. From […]
I was recently in New York as part of my Humor Code travels, and I met Paul Noth, a cartoonist whose work appears in The New Yorker. We talked about the types of cartoons that might have broad (even universal) appeal. He kindly agreed to a video interview: Comedy often doesn’t translate well across cultures. […]
