Apes, babies, and people everywhere (with the possible exception of Switzerland) enjoy humor. But why is humor so prevalent? And why is it so pleasurable? Why do we seek spouses, friends, books, movies, television programs, websites, and LOL cat photographs that make us laugh? Most likely, humor is ubiquitous and
Probably.. I recently met Louis C.K. backstage before a stand-up performance (documented in this post). One striking observation was his demeanor during the performance was much more appealing than during the interview. Why? A large literature in psychology finds that people are strongly influenced by situational rather than dispositional consideration,
Kit, co-owner of the Boulder cafe Atlas Purveyors (@atlaspurveyors), is helping me run an experiment. We want to sell this rubber chicken: How would you do it? Tell us: ____ Lower the price (e.g., only $.50) ____ Raise the price (e.g., only $5) ____ Make it scarce (e.g., last one!)
Comedian, actor, writer, and producer, Louis C.K, recently performed his stand-up act at the Paramount Theater in Denver, CO. I pulled a few strings and managed to speak with him before his performance. How Louis C.K. felt about my questions. . In previous posts (here and here) I addressed why
Some pretty bright folks have asked the question, what makes things funny? Despite efforts from the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Freud, there’s been little agreement on the answer. There are hundreds if not thousands of different humor theories, many of which fall into one of three broad categories: superiority
Before TEDxBoulder, I had a chance to conduct a brief interview with David Thomas, co-editor of the Videogame Journalism Style Guide and Reference Manual. He also blogs on occasion: www.buzzcut.com I asked him, “What makes a place fun?,” which happened to be the title of his talk. His complete TEDxBoulder
The Takeaway is in Denver for a few days. I woke up early this morning (4:15 am MST) to appear in studio with the lovely Celeste Headlee. The Takeaway is a national morning news program produced in partnership with The New York Times, the BBC World Service, WNYC, Public Radio International
Below I introduce the benign violation theory and discuss a paper, Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny, that Caleb Warren and I recently published in the August 2010 volume of Psychological Science. The benign violation theory builds on work by Tom Veatch and integrates existing humor theories to propose that
This episode seeks to explore the singles advocacy movement with Gordon Morris, who is aiming to breathe new life into Unmarried Equality, a nonprofit
Welcome to the final episode of I’M NOT JOKING. Comedian JD Lopez returns from Episode 1 to debrief and reflect on Peter’s experience building
