#578 - Peter McGraw

[0] We used to do commercials, but now we just add them in later.

[1] So we'll just go live, just start talking.

[2] Are we live?

[3] Yeah.

[4] What is that?

[5] It's just fucking chaos.

[6] Is that some music playing in the background?

[7] Peter McGrath.

[8] Sir, how are you?

[9] Scholar, author, comedy expert, the humor code.

[10] Two out of three.

[11] Two out of three.

[12] I'll just let you folks out there figure out which one of the two.

[13] So your book, Humor Code, is just, Just, uh, it's all about analyzing comedy and the art of comedy, where comedy comes from, where humor comes from.

[14] Yes.

[15] No, so it's, yeah, I mean, good pause.

[16] Okay, all right, we're done.

[17] You guys got timing.

[18] We're done.

[19] That's it.

[20] Uh, you can get it on Amazon .com.

[21] Is there an audible book available?

[22] There is.

[23] Uh, you know?

[24] Did you read it?

[25] Uh, no. Another one.

[26] God damn it, there's a, there's a fucking, there's some sort of a trend out there where these publishers won't let authors read their own book.

[27] I think that's a huge.

[28] disservice to the authors, except for Stephen King.

[29] So we, so, you know, I co -wrote this book, and the joke was that we were going to read every other word in order to like make it even.

[30] Right.

[31] So actually the book, yeah, the book's about what makes things funny.

[32] And it's a, it's a global expedition.

[33] So I teamed up with a writer, Joel Warner.

[34] And the book's actually told in his voice.

[35] So it's a co -written book, but it's Joel sort of narrating what it is that we're going through, like through his eyes.

[36] Right.

[37] And then it allows him to make fun of me for, like, doing dumb things and stuff like that.

[38] Right.

[39] But you know who, you know who narrated the book?

[40] His name's Peter Breckoff, Berkhov.

[41] He was on Animal House.

[42] Really?

[43] There's a scene with Bill Murray where he, like, accost one of the caddies, and he's, like, holding a pitchfork up next to his throat, and he's telling some story, and the guy's, like, looking really scared and awkward.

[44] Bill Murray?

[45] No, Bill Murray was in the scene with the guy.

[46] who narrated the book.

[47] I wish.

[48] But Bill Murray wasn't an animal house.

[49] Oh, what did I say?

[50] I mean, Caddyshack.

[51] Right.

[52] Caddyshack.

[53] You did say Animal House, right, didn't you?

[54] Did I?

[55] Yeah.

[56] Okay.

[57] Can we strike that?

[58] Can we?

[59] We beat.

[60] No, there's that out?

[61] No, Mr. Cosby.

[62] We cannot redact anything from this.

[63] We study too soon.

[64] We definitely, that's a big part of the book.

[65] I think you got off light.

[66] It's good.

[67] Leave this fucking disaster alone.

[68] Oh, my God.

[69] It's terrible.

[70] terrible people are looking at it from a lot of ways but the real way to look at it is that how did this happen how did this guy trick everybody to thinking he was america's wholesome father and all the while he was a drugging rapist it's unbelievable it's terrifying it's terrifying that a guy like that can make it to like 70 whatever the hell he was by doing it i mean 77 doing it since the 60s apparently well yeah i don't i have i can get in trouble very easily i have tenure so i'll tread lightly i hear you i'm okay i've got tenure so i can go down some of these paths right but here's the thing that is striking to me is like why does he need to do something like like it's not like the man probably didn't have admirers like there's something yes scary it's very you're very right you're very right and that's that sort of supports a lot of uh the arguments that women always want to uh bring up when they talk about rape that rape is not about sex it's about violence It's about control.

[71] That's right.

[72] And when you have a guy like this, I mean, what clear, first of all, he is so wealthy.

[73] If he wanted to just order prostitutes and have them wait in the hall, like, by the hundreds, he could do that.

[74] I mean, he doesn't have to drug people.

[75] Like, why?

[76] And I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy having sex with Bill Cosby.

[77] They'd be like, oh, boy, I got to have sex with Bill Cosby.

[78] Maybe it's just that he has such disdain for people that he just doesn't mind treating them like, objects who the fuck knows we're just speculating it's awful i think what it does though it highlights i mean it's it's just a terrible terrible thing but what it highlights i think is that the the person on stage and the person in the green room can often be different people and sometimes the person on stage is a lot nicer and friendlier right and warmer and sometimes the person in the green room is a lot um a lot nicer warmer you know i mean like it's like so the idea essentially is that that um when you see someone you see their public persona stand -up comedian, an actor and so on, that's a character who may or may not be sort of closely related to the person who they are.

[79] So I like to say Gallagher's not at the local neighborhood block party smashing watermelons and running around, you know?

[80] He's like a really nutty conservative.

[81] You ever heard him talk about things?

[82] No, never.

[83] He's been on radio shows.

[84] Like, he's very like fiscally conservative and angry and, you know.

[85] Huh.

[86] See?

[87] I mean, there you go, right?

[88] And so you see, you know, you see this happen.

[89] You know, people sort of talk about comedians having a dark side.

[90] And some of it is, is that the act of being a funny person, you often go down dark places and talk about the things that are wrong in the world.

[91] But it's hard to know how dark that person is in the same way that, but it seems like Cosby flipped it, right?

[92] He seemed like the nice guy.

[93] He would chastise Chris Rock and Richard Pryor for using curse words.

[94] And yet, you know.

[95] so famous that any murphy bit is one of the greatest of all time did the people laugh did you get paid tell bill to have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up that's right i can just imagine that conversation taking place between eddie murphy and richard prior over bill cosby and that is just wouldn't it be great to be a fly on the wall for those two hanging out amazing i got to open or not open i actually got to go on after richard prior for the last shows of his life really yeah i mean he might have done a couple more after that that i didn't know about but as far as i know i work with him the last shows of his life at the uh at the comedy store that's crazy yeah when i and how is it that you had to go after him because the comedy store um was run by mitsy shore and mitsy shore had a really a do or die philosophy she had like a gladiator philosophy when it came to comedy she would take comics and if she thought they had any Potential whatsoever she would shove them against the most damning odds like I used to have to go on after Martin Lawrence when Martin Lawrence was on Martin and he would do like 45 minutes in the main room and destroy People have like slept on Martin Lawrence and I don't know how it happened but Martin Lawrence for one at one point in time he had some issues he got a little crazy and you know I remember he was like wearing a rubber suit and he got pulled over by the cops and he had a gun or something Remember that?

[96] No he was running the hang out with you guys more often and find out all these stories we'll give you the real inside on stand -up comedy but uh yeah he had a he had some sort of a breakdown um but uh before that i mean i think a lot of that is probably stress related just from being such a fucking mega star but before that he would come to the comedy store and fucking destroy and i used to go on after him and eat just giant platters of shit i would bomb every time i'd go on after dice clay i'd go on after anybody who is Like, if there was a big name, Mitzie would shove me on right after.

[97] And that means she likes you.

[98] I mean, she believes in you.

[99] Yeah, it's like, sink or swim, bitch.

[100] This is it.

[101] You know, you can't get those eight o 'clock cushy spots after Argus Hamilton when everybody's nice and warmed up and friendly and no one's drunk yet.

[102] No, no, you're going to go on at 10 .45 after, you know, a guy like Damon Waynes does 45 minutes and destroys.

[103] Anyway.

[104] Is that why you started weight training?

[105] Yeah, I got scared.

[106] Fight off the audience.

[107] so I would go on after prior and they would bring prior to the stage and it would take like I'm not exaggerating at least four or five minutes to get him to the stage because the all -ar is a small room the original room but you have to start in the back and two guys would have to carry him so they'd have to walk with him they'd have to clear the path and make the path towards the stage larger so they could get him through and then they would slowly walk him down the aisle they literally like picking him up stepping picking him up stepping him and his body was just gone he was severely deteriorated then they would put him on this chair and he would drink and he was on medication he was still drinking and they would crank the mic up like because he couldn't talk so you had to make it really loud so he could talk and and then you know people get really bummed out and then I'd have to go on after him it depending on how much time he would do sometimes you do like a half an hour sometimes you'd only do like 20 minutes but you know you're watching arguably the most influential greatest stand -up comedian of all time and this is his last days and it was just it was hard yeah i went back and watch some of his stuff it's i was really interesting to go back and watch classic yeah stand -up and the thing about richard stuff is as opposed to eddie murphy stuff it holds up yeah really strongly yeah in a way that like topically even it it would you wonder like what would like what would happen with a guy like that today and the machinery like where would he have gone in terms of television film it's a good question so on because he's just so I mean he's so funny yeah and he's so likable in ways that you know he was the best I think Kinnison was probably the best for like a year but overall priors the best because like I think Lenny Bruce is the most important bill bill already just took himself out of consideration who did bill cosby yeah he's out you know it's funny just not even like a few months ago bill burr and i were planning on taking a trip to Vegas just to see bill cosby we were we were plotting it out and we're like let's just take a weekend off because everybody always raves about how good he is like i've heard a bunch of comics like chris rock was raving about it chris rock was saying that he felt like an amateur after he saw oh well bill cosby and i watched his special and i was like man I don't know like this seems like fucking like some really like conversational middle of the road stuff not you know by any means offensive it wasn't that good to me I see you know he was brilliant back in the day like you go listen to like that Noah's Ark bit and all that stuff from like way back when but the stuff that I was watching that he was doing recently I was like all right we should just go just because of a historical thing and then all this shit comes out I want to know what Hannibal thinks about all this like if he's sitting there going he's probably just fucking hiding.

[108] If I was Hannibal, I'd fucking hide.

[109] Because that guy might get you killed.

[110] I mean, think about it, like, how much money does Bill Cosby have and how much time does he have left on this planet?

[111] And he's got to connect the fact that this one like really respected stand -up comic started calling him a racist or a rapist, rather, no, I said racist.

[112] A rapist on stage.

[113] And then it hit, I forget where it, I mean, like the next day it showed up online.

[114] Yeah.

[115] But it's taken a little while to pick up.

[116] Well, everybody knew about it before then.

[117] This is what it's really weird.

[118] It's like, almost like a volcano that gave you a bunch of warning eruptions and then spewed because there was stories from way back in like the early two thousands of you know improprieties as it were and it was mildly in the news when hannibal started talking about it that's how he started talking about in his act he had done it for a few weeks a couple times here and there but yeah he just said like go google it's all over the news just no one's paying attention until this happened yeah so maybe you can explain this to me as someone who i visit l a some you know i sort of pay attention attention a little bit to what's going on here obviously have gotten connected into the comedy scene how is it that there are these uh what is it like dark stories that everybody sort of knows in in hollywood but no one ever talks about outside of that i don't think there's that many anymore okay you know i think things like this like this is as dark as it gets okay this is this is an evil crime of uh of epic proportion i mean and one that there's going to be no justice right that's the thing that makes it very difficult I mean even if you put him in jail he's how much time does he have left in his life and he lived this like fantastic existence for 70 plus years I'm sure right now none of that matters to him I'm sure right now he is in hell you know that's one of the weird things about the concept of karma you know like when you you do evil shit to people and even if you got away with it for a long time it's probably still creeping away at his inside constantly and then when it finally does overtake him like right now and he's just swarmed by allegations, it must just feel like hell.

[119] It's got to feel like hell.

[120] Speaking of hell, if someone told me when we set this up that we were going to be, spend the first half of this podcast talking about Bill Cosby and the rape allegations, I never would have believed it.

[121] I never would have believed it either.

[122] I never would have believed.

[123] Someone on Twitter wrote that, like for the first time in 40 years, Charles Manson is having a better week than Bill Cosby because Manson got married.

[124] yeah it's it's fucked man the the dark side thing yeah i want to hear what you're my take on that um a lot of comedy comes from people being scared or bullied or making light of situations and that's where they sort of develop their sense of humor including mine mine was like sort of a it came about through a different angle but it's all sort of the same thing and i think a lot of comics were ignored and were not loved and they developed this exorbitant need for attention it's so powerful it makes them want to stand on a stage like they're trying to get it all back it's almost like they're trying to seek balance from what they didn't get in their childhood that's almost everyone i know yeah okay so i so i so i buy that like that makes a lot of intuitive sense the challenge with that is that that's the same story that people put forth for other artists for musicians and for you know painters and like that they that their art arose from dark sort of place and it's a way to kind of try to fix things, try to cope or, you know, trying to be, um, to feel positive again.

[125] Um, and then the other thing is, though, there's lots of people who've been bullied and scared and had terrible childhoods who don't become funny, right?

[126] So, so, so I mean, I think that there is something to this notion.

[127] Um, but I wonder how how specific it is to comedy and what is it that differentiate someone like you versus someone who never became funny like you know so so what where's that mechanism because i that i don't have a good answer to i i have an answer to why people seem messed up who who do comedy because most people don't get on stage right and tell the world about their problems um but there's plenty of people in the audience who were abused as kids and they're alcoholics and are divorced and all these kinds of things so it so it's a really interesting puzzle and it's certainly one that that there's a lot of evidence for because you really notice when a seemingly happy comic commits suicide like Robin Williams or, you know, someone O .Ds, etc. Mm -hmm.

[128] And so, so what is it, though, that you can point to that made you go down the path of comedy versus some other path?

[129] Well, I can comment on this in a unique way because there was a lot of other points of focus that I use to try to destroy.

[130] distract myself from from my unhappy childhood that it weren't funny at all okay i was an artist and i was really heavily into like drawing comic books and then i became a martial artist okay and i started fighting from the time i was like 15 until i was like 21 that's that was my entire focus in my life so during that time i wasn't funny at all and the only people that i would make laugh was like guys in the locker room and it came out of a a fear like we would spar and sparring scary because you know you're practicing fighting and a lot of times you're like The way to get good is you've got to hit each other really hard.

[131] You got to do it like it's a real fight.

[132] You kind of pull back a little bit sometimes, but it's just scary as shit.

[133] And oftentimes you're sparring with people you don't know, and that turns into like an actual fight.

[134] So every sparring session we would do, especially on Saturdays with this big thing called team training that we do on Saturday morning.

[135] And I would make everybody laugh.

[136] I would be the guy who would be like cracking jokes.

[137] You're doing impressions of people.

[138] But I was only doing it because I was scared and I was doing it for them because I wanted them to pay attention to me. I think that all the other energy that I put forth into art and into martial arts was just trying to calm down whatever fucking ridiculous storm was inside my head because I didn't get enough attention or my life was fucked up or, you know, fill in the blank for whatever it is.

[139] And I think the path of comedy is just a unique path in and of itself because there's so much criticism and analysis and self -analysis.

[140] and judgment by the audience and then this pressure to produce comedy.

[141] There's so much going on on top of the initial motivation that got you into it.

[142] But I think that path can go to guitar playing.

[143] That path can go to.

[144] It's just trying to find something that makes you feel special.

[145] And if you, I mean, there's a bunch of people that have that issue in their head and they've never figured it out.

[146] And they've, you know, bounced around in normal jobs and never can keep it together and become drug addicts or alcoholics or.

[147] you know, fill in the blank, but I think it all comes from a very similar place.

[148] And it's really weird that our society, that human beings, rather, are like that.

[149] But if you don't get enough attention at certain ports in your developmental process, you develop this exorbitant need for an unbalanced need for attention.

[150] And you either learn how to deal with that and learn how to channel it, or you don't.

[151] But if you do learn how to channel it, it's like a massive advantage.

[152] It's like being a crazy attention war, if you can keep a handle on, It's like, what an engine for motivation you have.

[153] Yeah, I think in some ways you really need that to make it in this business.

[154] It's such, you know, stand -up comedy.

[155] So I gave it a shot.

[156] Actually, that's what started the Humor Code Project was this journalist said to me, you know, I want you to come to this open mic night and critique the comedians.

[157] Tell me why they're funny or not using your theory.

[158] And in a moment of hubris, I said, oh, I don't want to get on.

[159] stage and tell some jokes and you can imagine how that went uh it did not go well how long did you prepare uh this is embarrassing to say now because i know about the business i prepared like 24 hours that's better than not at all yeah yeah it's i mean i understand i get it now but you know when you're when you're outside the business you don't really understand what goes what goes into it and then at the end of the book at the end of our travels i got on stage again this time at just for laughs and at a real comedy club in montreal in montreal oh okay at the comedy nest oh okay yeah and then to sort of prove right that i've learned something along the way did you get laughs i did oh that's awesome i did yeah it was good yeah it was fun yeah it was fun but uh but uh where was it going oh the idea is that that that to want the attention to want to succeed so badly is necessary it's not sufficient but it's necessary because you face challenges yeah you face failure the risk of failure all the time failure regularly and then you just have to do it constantly yeah to be able to get those sort of shining moments that I think help propel you even further along well it's also um in order to get good you have to accept that failure and you have to absorb the pain It's a very weird thing But I find that the more satisfied I am with what I do The shittier my product is And the more I'm disgusted by everything I do The better everything is And this I like I could have a murderous set Where I'm killing for an hour And I'll fuck one setup of one thing And that's all I think about For like days So like there's like this intense Never Satisfied sort of narrative that keeps going on when I'm really working on something and I really get into it, I'm never satisfied.

[160] Well, there's a, so there's this, if I could be a professor for a moment, so there's what's what's called the negativity bias or negativity dominance.

[161] And it's essentially the idea that the negative things in the world hold much more sway over our decisions, our emotions, our reasoning than positive things.

[162] And it's, it's part of the reason that that one little element can outshine.

[163] outweigh and you know 59 minutes of other good stuff right and um i mean that makes it makes sense from sort of an evolutionary standpoint but then when you think about the stakes associated with wanting to become a stand -up comic it it actually becomes really rational to pay attention to the to those failures right because you have to eliminate them or fix them if you want to get that hour special that just shines yeah you also you don't do yourself any good by being happy with your work it's fucked up but it's true it's like you you i mean i'm happy with the results like i know like objectively or that was really good but i could i could go look at my last special which i think the one that's coming out it's coming out tonight oh wow on comedy central midnight tonight's the first night but i think it's my best one but i always think that but this one i really do like objectively think it's my best one i put way more work into it than my last one but i could go back and watch a bit like five times and get crazy and go what the fuck did I do it like that for like oh if I just did this or like you can't you can never find like a peaceful moment and it's because the stakes are so high first of all and the the impact of it like when it's when you when you get it good when you really get it and nail it and in the audience is dying laughing and then people go that's my all -time favorite bit like that that is so funny like that is such an important thing to be able to accomplish it's so and there's only one way to do it you got a fucking crawl through glass if you don't crawl through glass if you don't really look at it for what it is it'll never get to that point and the only way to look at it like that is you got to be like super hypercritical and if you're hypercritical you're gonna fucking hate everything you're gonna hate everything you do you know i um i i i i'm so i did my postdoc with danny connemin so he won the Nobel prize in economics for psychological insights into decision making and i worked with him before i did the post hoc when i was a graduate student he was in his late 60s at the time i was in my late 20s and i helped him edit a couple chapters and that guy what you just described is him he he would write a paragraph and i would be like oh it was great and he goes no no no and then he would rewrite it in front of me and it would take him like 45 minutes and then i'd be like oh yeah that's better and he goes no and then he would just write it over again and we would so we'd work on a paragraph for like three hours that I already thought was good right and at the end of it it was great and then we would just move on to the next paragraph and it it's just like I think that that idea being so obsessed obsessed with getting it perfect is what you need to get something near perfect yes the only way you really achieve what we want to call greatness yes Ernest Hemingway has this great quote that my friend Ari Sheffir has taped on the front of his laptop.

[164] Okay.

[165] The first draft of everything is shit.

[166] Yeah.

[167] Yeah, shitty first drafts.

[168] And he just puts it.

[169] He puts it right on his laptop, like right where the, uh, the thing above the keyboard.

[170] So he looks at that every time he writes.

[171] Yeah.

[172] And it's just that, that's what you got to do.

[173] You got to write and you got to rewrite and you got to analyze and you got to listen.

[174] Like Brian and I were actually just talking about this last night.

[175] It's fucking hard to listen to yourself.

[176] He's like, I hate my voice.

[177] I fucking hate what I sound like.

[178] I figured it out.

[179] If you put it on double speed, it sounds a little different.

[180] Like it doesn't sound like your voice You're trying to hack it You're not trying to hack to develop it And you don't have to listen as long Yeah and it's faster And you know what you're talking about already So if you listen to double speed It's the way to go Because that's the problem I had Is my voice is so gross No you should listen to your voice And fix that shit That's what you're supposed to do You're supposed to do something That doesn't seem gross to you But you're like Oh fuck you reality Changing your voice is messed up though No you just have to You don't have to change your voice You just have to calm down do you just calm down you silly goose so what's the name of your special uh rocky mountain high okay it's a denver song yes i know fucking john denver had to had to use it plus i i did it in denver uh it was right after the comedy works in denver i decided yeah it's the best i decided to do it at a comedy club first of all because i wanted to because i think that i've been doing in in these theaters so i had a lot of decision making after my last special the live of the tabernacle one I wasn't that happy with it.

[181] I was happy with some bits, but I was like, man, if I had, like, more time to work on that, I could have made that whole thing better.

[182] And then I thought about it.

[183] I'm like, you know, another thing is, I don't think that that's the right environment for doing a special, like, on a giant stage.

[184] I'm like, when you watch someone in a comedy club and you're in your living room, like, you're right there, you know?

[185] Like, you feel like it kind of...

[186] You know, these big wide shots and so on.

[187] Exactly.

[188] So I didn't want any of that.

[189] Very little shots of the audience.

[190] I just wanted to just focus on the thing.

[191] Like, you're someone in the audience.

[192] just watching in the audience and um Denver is just you know right now is just changing so radically because of the marijuana being legal it's just bizarre the culture is expanding in this really strange way that everybody idealized like this would be the ideal scenario you get a hundred million dollars a year in taxes you know the violent crime drops drunk driving drops murder rate drops but that's actually what's happening yeah and you know um sort of like tons of young people are moving there the tech scene is booming yeah um yeah it's the city's doing very well it's blowing up and it's going to continue it's an amazing amazing place colorado's my favorite spot i'm stuck here for a little bit i'll fucking get back there those mountains you just can't beat that view that view is insane yeah it's a nice place to live god damn i don't want to bring everybody to move into your neighborhood well i own so that's okay i have help uh you know what is so here The thing that I like about Colorado is the thing that I also don't like about Colorado is that – so I live in Boulder, so, you know, I'm 30 miles north of Denver, is that it's just such an easy place to live.

[193] Like, it's just things function very easily, and everybody's very nice, and they're fit, and, you know, things run well and so on.

[194] So you could be productive, you can be creative there, you can get stuff done, and you can be healthy doing it.

[195] but I like coming to L .A., although L .A. is a lot harder, as you know, but it's also, there's like, this is also a hub in ways that a place like Boulder or Denver can't be.

[196] Right.

[197] You know, there's just, it's just so, the scale is so much bigger and the people that you meet are just doing big things.

[198] Like Adderall.

[199] Yeah, this is a crazy place.

[200] You're not supposed to have this many people.

[201] You know what I went to recently, where it really cemented it?

[202] I went to Mexico City.

[203] Oh, yeah.

[204] I was in Mexico City for the UFC.

[205] First of all, it's like a robot farting in your face 24 hours a day.

[206] That's what Mexico City smells like.

[207] Like, it is so polluted.

[208] I put a photo on my Instagram, and people are like, holy shit.

[209] Like, when you're flying into Mexico City, you're like, whoa, that's dark.

[210] And it's perpetual gridlock.

[211] So you know how, like, sometimes in L .A., you get to a green light and some assholes.

[212] They drove into the intersection, the light changes, and they're stuck there.

[213] And then everybody honks and, you know, everybody tries to be more courteous and they go around the guy and then you behind them.

[214] So you make sure that you don't do that.

[215] You give yourself a little gap room.

[216] You know, so like this is right it's about to change.

[217] Let me hover back here so I don't fucking block.

[218] Because I'm a good person.

[219] Exactly.

[220] They don't ever do that in Mexico.

[221] That shit doesn't happen.

[222] So when you're driving at 5 o 'clock, there's just jammed up this way and jammed up that way.

[223] There's red, there's red, there's red.

[224] The light turns green.

[225] You move forward little light turns red.

[226] Where are they going?

[227] They're fucking, they're right there and you're parked in the middle of the intersection it's perpetual gridlock with the nicest people that's the other thing that was strange honking is there honking in mexics very little very little very friendly very nice people yeah like there is way more people than there are in la but everybody's really chill like they're super friendly like mexican people in mexico city are some of the nicest people i've ever met in any foreign city like when i first went to it's like consistently nice that's great yeah you know and they didn't know me there's just they were just normal nice folks but that that monster of traffic and gridlock and people is what we're going to expect in LA.

[228] It's just going to happen.

[229] If it doesn't happen in 20, it'll happen in 50 or 100 years, whatever it is.

[230] Like, that's inevitable.

[231] And that's fucking chaos.

[232] Unbelievable chaos.

[233] There's too many people.

[234] I read this thing that L .A. County has more people than all, like, I think 13th.

[235] It's like if it was a state, it'd be like the 13th largest state or something like that.

[236] Just L .A. County.

[237] Just L .A. County.

[238] Yeah, that makes sense.

[239] Something like that's really obscene.

[240] It's enormous.

[241] It's an enormous, enormous amount of people.

[242] It's very strange.

[243] It's like, you got to wonder, like, what is everybody here for?

[244] Like, how many of these people are here because of show business?

[245] Like, what is the actual number?

[246] Because there's a lot of people that go, well, you know, I'm going to give a shot.

[247] Go to California.

[248] And they have, like, sort of this, like, very non -committed idea of trying to make it a show business, hoping they make some connections and along the way they quit.

[249] I've been a lot of people like that, right?

[250] There's a lot of people like that you meet.

[251] Yeah, I think a lot of them are in the show business, but there's so many different kinds of, like I think porn extras.

[252] I mean, there's so many just people in this way.

[253] There's very few people in porn extras.

[254] That is just the worst example ever.

[255] Porn extras.

[256] Hey, we're looking for porn extras.

[257] Yoshi keeps on contacting me to be a porn extra.

[258] That's Yoshi, bro.

[259] Yoshi's fucking crazy.

[260] Why are you pretending like Yoshi's normal?

[261] Oh, it's normal.

[262] Here, I have an example for you.

[263] He's like, he thinks they want to do it.

[264] He's like, it's like, it's $100.

[265] You get to watch porn.

[266] You just have to stand in the background with other people fucking know.

[267] Yeah.

[268] Do you know what?

[269] I'm glad I'll re -listen to this at double speed.

[270] Yeah.

[271] This is, yeah, this is the time to fast forward.

[272] Porn extras.

[273] What a fucking terrible example.

[274] There is so.

[275] There's a bit in there, though, right?

[276] Probably, yeah.

[277] Porn extra bit.

[278] Yeah.

[279] There's probably a bit in there.

[280] Yeah, my friend was a porn extra.

[281] He had to be behind a blowjob scene where Spired a man was hanging upside down and she was giving him a blowjob upside down and he just was like inches away having to just sit there and go ah because he was spider man against the wall or uh webbed against the wall yeah okay that doesn't that doesn't get central casting doesn't send people out for that stuff uh no they probably was like a craigslist thing it's probably all non -union you know the whole deal okay but um anyway back to uh motivations and stand -up comedy and this and that did you how did you um like come to conclusions or you know extract data when it comes to like yeah so i have a i have a lab at the university of colorado called the humor research lab an actual lab but do you wear coats we don't you know like people always want us to you should you know the media is like where do you have any lab coats you any rubber chickens like whenever rappers refer to like they're where they write as the lab like kid cuddy i want them to wear a lab coat you're in the lab fucking take this shit to the next level son we've thought about it for When we bring in participants for subjects, we thought about wearing lab coats just to make it, like, for the subjects to take it more seriously.

[282] Really?

[283] Lab coats say science.

[284] We should get some beakers, you know, and things like that.

[285] But now we don't do any of that stuff.

[286] Okay.

[287] But so the, by the way, the acronym is hurl.

[288] So we refer to the humor research lab as hurl.

[289] Oh, okay.

[290] Hurl with laughter.

[291] Yes.

[292] And we, so we, so what we did was sometimes we run experiments out.

[293] out in the field.

[294] Sometimes we'd run experiments back in the laboratory.

[295] So we'd have an idea.

[296] We'd go out and investigate it and then oftentimes would supplement that work in the laboratory or elsewhere.

[297] So you mentioned comedy works as being such a great room.

[298] One of the things that we do in the humor code is investigate what makes a great comedy room.

[299] And we actually tried to construct a comedy club at this art museum that was doing a special event.

[300] So we showed comedy clips and we changed aspects of that.

[301] of the of the room to see if it would actually have an effect in the way that you would expect based on your experience as a comedian and sometimes you know the studies work sometimes they don't work but it served as a nice um scene by which to talk about like you know why is that the comedians are especially funny in a comedy club like why what helps make a joke land what did you come what were your conclusions so um so one of the things that people always talk about it's like having a low ceiling and how beneficial a low ceiling is and so you're like okay well why is that the case you know so the what they'll say is that the laughter will kind of bounce back down onto the audience and and if you think about it what what laughter really is is a communication tool right it's a primitive communication tool so babies laugh you don't need language to laugh right babies laugh monkeys chimps bonobos there's even evidence that rats engage in something akin to laughter.

[302] And what it does is it communicates that this situation, and this is getting into the theory that we test, the situation that seems wrong is actually okay.

[303] What we say is, it says, oh, this is a benign violation.

[304] And when other people are laughing at something that you just said that might be a little bit off color, what they're essentially saying is, oh, this is okay to me, this is positive to me. And you get these contagious effects.

[305] Right.

[306] It's like when some people will laugh after a statement that's not funny.

[307] I guess I left the keys at home.

[308] Yeah.

[309] You know, they're trying to let you know.

[310] Like, oh, no, yeah, sorry.

[311] And everyone's like, it's okay.

[312] It's okay.

[313] That's what they're doing, right?

[314] Yeah, so there's some...

[315] L -O -L.

[316] What's interesting about laughter is that it doesn't necessarily communicate that something's funny.

[317] That it's been co -opted by language in a way that...

[318] So when people punctuate a sentence with laughter, it's something they often don't even know they're doing and it's just a way to kind of smooth the interaction versus the kind of what so that's what's called non -duchin laughter non -dushy Duchyne Duchyne D -U -C -H -E Couldn't you come up with another type of Dishani?

[319] Is that how it's pronounced?

[320] Yeah he has no idea how it's pronounced You are asking a wrong guy Do not answer Kim questions Trust me keep the eyes up here All right right right so um you got sucked in i did i did i thought i've said that word like 150 times you just got red band i had so the idea is that you have like for instance smiles a smile can be an indication of positive emotion or it could be like a sorority girl's girl smile that's like a fake smile the same can happen with laughter right so i could politely laugh at a joke that you have that you've said just because i i don't like ha ha ha ha ha exactly just trying to do you're just trying to to be nice so that doesn't indicate amusement right um but when it does like you know so so it can though obviously like most of the laughter that we have is that we're actually enjoying something about a moment in time and but when other people are laughing it has that contagious effect so if you think about about laughter as a signaling tool it's useful if you want if you want to spread that signal out and so a low ceiling helps it helps get someone laughing who might not necessarily necessarily be laughing because they're just surrounded in laughter right that makes sense um so one of things is having a dark room is really important it's why the comedy store i think people really like the dark you know it's such a dark room yeah it disinhibits the audience so when you're in darkness you feel anonymous and and again if because i believe that that comedy plays on on violations on talking about things that are wrong that are threatening that are amiss in some way well most of the time those things aren't funny they make us laugh they make us excuse me they make us cry they anger us they they confuse us they disgust us and and they embarrass us and so when you're in but when you're in darkness you can let loose you won't hold back a laugh laughter because you're like oh i can't i don't want to be the person who laughs at that kind of a joke and so it has this disinhibiting effect uh some of the other things are like you know chairs having a chair that's that's kind of uncomfortable, you know, that in you're cramming people in, it helps increase arousal.

[321] So, because comedy plays on arousal, taking things that are kind of negatively arousing and making them positive.

[322] And the more arousing the situation is the bigger, the emotional experience.

[323] That's interesting.

[324] So jamming people up together makes them slightly uncomfortable because they're invading each other spaces.

[325] Is that what it is?

[326] Yeah, and you're just like more awake and more like uncomfortable.

[327] and then another thing about jamming all these people together is you almost create this bonding among them yeah so i've had i've had comics talk about this idea of comedy as a conspiracy it's like it's like us versus them like everybody in the room here we all get it and those fools out there they don't get it and when you're jammed in there with all these people you feel connected to them in a way that that i think often helps what a lot of comics are doing is just pointing out what's wrong with the world and so now we have this bond we feel we're highly aroused there's no one falling asleep during a comedy show you've got the laughter bouncing back down on people you've got the darkness and then the last thing is you've got the red brick wall behind the comic and this I'm not sure how much of an effect this has but certain colors have that kind of more arousing like a red brick Because, like, the, behind me. Yeah.

[328] Like, that's a good arousal?

[329] So the, so red is a more arousing color than, like, blue, for instance.

[330] What about, like, flat red?

[331] That'd be fine.

[332] Why the brick?

[333] No, that's just...

[334] Does the brick make it, like, homey?

[335] Is that what the idea is?

[336] I don't know.

[337] I think it's just, there's just...

[338] No, it's not brick, per se.

[339] I don't know if there's anything about the brick.

[340] There's so many comedy clubs with bricks.

[341] I know.

[342] Every improv has bricks.

[343] Yeah.

[344] They all have bricks.

[345] Even if they don't have bricks, they bring bricks in.

[346] I think it's the red more than the brick, although that's an interesting.

[347] I could run that study.

[348] I mean, I'm thinking about it.

[349] Actually, I paid to have these bricks put in.

[350] These aren't even real bricks.

[351] Is that right?

[352] Yeah, there's like a veneer.

[353] They're like that thick.

[354] It's a veneer.

[355] There's like wire they put down.

[356] Then they do it, but it makes me feel better.

[357] It is.

[358] Well, you're doing something real bricks.

[359] But it's not all brick construction.

[360] Like, it's not going to stop the Hulk from running through the wall.

[361] I don't know why I said the Hulk.

[362] He's not real.

[363] My point.

[364] I don't think real bricks stop the Hulk.

[365] No. My point being, I was wondering why, um, I think everything you said makes a lot of sense, and one thing that I didn't even consider is the uncomfortable factor because there's a place called the Ha Ha Ha Cafe that I love.

[366] It's a North Hollywood great spot, but they have couches in the front.

[367] And people are just like, just lounge.

[368] They should get rid of the couches.

[369] Now I'm thinking about it.

[370] I need them to listen to this podcast.

[371] Like, ditch the couches, give them some shitty fucking folding chairs, slide them in there.

[372] So the other one is that, and this, I haven't done the research on it, but I believe it's the case.

[373] It doesn't happen in comedy clubs that much, But it happens like late night television.

[374] You get those like freezing cold rooms.

[375] Like Letterman is famous for like a 54 degree room or something like that.

[376] And what you hear is people say, oh, it's because of the lights and the people are, you know, they're in these suits and they want to just keep it cold.

[377] But I think it's also, again, it keeps the audience away because you're not going to, you're not going to nap when it's like 54 degrees.

[378] You're, you know, you're uncomfortable and you're awake.

[379] Yeah, I think he's dead right about that.

[380] That totally makes sense as well I think another thing to take any consideration I don't know if you did Is that part of comedy Part of what's going on is it's like some sort of a mass Hypnosis sort of a thing When a guy's on stage and you're really in the zone Like you just got your material like laid out And it's just you're just riding this fucking thing And the crowd is roaring and laughing along with you There's they're letting you think for them almost It's like they're allowing you to have access to the wheel of their mind and you take them on this crazy comedic journey and in that sense it's kind of like a mass hypnosis in a way and the smaller the area that you're doing this the more comfortable people are going to feel allowing themselves to be taken away like this like when you have low ceilings the parameters are like very clearly defined like there's the ceiling right there's the floor here's the wall this is a small place but when you get a big place like when you're doing like a madison square garden or an arena or someplace with a giant ceiling people always say well I that's not a good place for comedy where the laughs die away there's a little bit of that but it's also like you know there's a lot above us there's a lot there's a lot of space here it's less comforting it's like it's less uh less contained than like say a place like the helium in philadelphia where joey dyes is this weekend uh helium is one of the great comedy clubs in this country so really low ceiling tight it's in you know this great neighborhood and it's just perfect like you couldn't get any better it's like you're right on top of those people yeah like everything's the the entire dimension the dimension of the room are clearly defined yeah i think um i i've i called madison square garden to have them let me run a study there and uh i haven't heard back from them yet so we'll see about that get get right back to you i'm sure they're not busy at all like one free night this fall i think um but it's very rare to see a comedian perform there though oh i think it's yeah i mean these are ease is doing it there Aziz has a gig there and I think um it actually might already had it.

[381] Dane's done it.

[382] Dice has done it.

[383] I think there's only a bit small handful.

[384] Yeah it helps to have a lot of fans right.

[385] I think that those arena kinds of things these are people who already love that comedian and they're going to see them.

[386] A little bit it's also an event.

[387] Yeah.

[388] You know like a like if Kevin Hart is showing up somewhere he's hot right now so it's an event we're going to go see Kevin Hart people at work even if they're not fans you guys got tickets for Kevin Hart He's hilarious.

[389] You know what I mean?

[390] It's like such a big name that it becomes an event.

[391] Yeah, that's interesting.

[392] I think, well, so the takeaway of all this is I think you made a great choice for Rocky Mountain High.

[393] Oh, Denver Comedy Works.

[394] Yeah, it's, I mean, every comedian I speak to talks about how that's in the top five.

[395] Yeah.

[396] Well, Wendy, who the woman who owns and runs it is like one of my favorite people ever.

[397] And she's responsible essentially for the entire comedy scene in Denver.

[398] She's, she fosters it.

[399] She developed this open mic program.

[400] brings people into the club, gives them time, then makes them, like, their middles.

[401] And then they could eventually, she, like, develops local headliners.

[402] It's one of the few places left that has local headliners.

[403] Oh, that's nice.

[404] Yeah, I know the, do you know the Gralex guys there?

[405] There's, like, a three -man crew they do, they do their own show, but they always are showing up at comedy works.

[406] No, I don't know them.

[407] Ben Roy, Adam, Kate and Holland, Andrew Orvidol.

[408] No, no, no. But those, you know, those are people, you know, those are folks who are sort of, yeah.

[409] Yeah, and now they're, you know, they're on the cusp.

[410] This is a real scene there.

[411] You know, Denver's one of the few places that has a real scene.

[412] That's what it takes.

[413] It takes, like, a club.

[414] We've often talked about Houston, because Houston is where Bill Hick started or Sam Kinnison started.

[415] Excuse me. Houston in the early 80s was a motherfucker.

[416] I mean, it was a hotbed of talent, but it was because of one club.

[417] It's because of the laugh stop.

[418] Laftop in River Oaks.

[419] And that's where I recorded my first ever CD in 1999.

[420] It was the first place I ever, like, did well.

[421] Like on the road, not did well, it got laughs, but like I would sell out every show.

[422] and it was because they were like looking for that kind of comedy like they had you know kinnison started there and like carlobo the outlaws of comedy all those guys came out of houston but when that club went away the scene went away yeah i know you need yeah you do need those things so we for the humor code we we came to l .a to look at stand -up and improv um and we actually went to we went to new york and looked at the new yorker cartoons um so we and we and um and also like humor in Madison Avenue and all that kind of stuff.

[423] And then we actually went to Tanzania, we went to Japan, we went to the West Bank, we went to Palestine, Scandinavia, the Amazon.

[424] And what's interesting is, I don't want to say stand -up as uniquely American, because like in Japan, they have like a vibrant comedy scene, but it's different.

[425] So in Japan, for instance, they have two -man comedy.

[426] It's called Monzae, and it's like Dean and Martin stuff.

[427] style stuff, like Abbott and Costello kind of thing.

[428] And they don't really have the comedy club, like the independent comedy club scene.

[429] It's all corporate in Japan, for instance.

[430] And, you know, it can in a lot of places, like obviously in the Amazon, they're not comedy clubs.

[431] You know, it's like, it's such an interesting.

[432] I mean, it really does have, has had its start in the United States.

[433] You know, Wendy had this great conversation with a large chain that was trying to set up in Denver.

[434] And there, you They wanted to talk to her about getting involved.

[435] And she said, what, what's your strategy as far as open micers, when open mic nights?

[436] She goes, we're not going to have open mic nights.

[437] She's like, okay, let me get this train.

[438] You want to sell widgets, but you don't want to make your own widgets.

[439] But you're selling widgets, but you don't develop widgets at all.

[440] You know, any resources in developing widgets.

[441] See, other people have to bring you the widgets.

[442] And they're like, oh, we didn't see it that way.

[443] Right.

[444] You know, these places like the improv, I do a lot of the improvs, but they don't do open mic nights.

[445] And I think that's a huge disservice to the art form and to them.

[446] It's just they don't, they see it short -sidedly.

[447] They see that as being a detriment to their business because they're going to have to pay the wait staff and they might even lose money on that night.

[448] But I think that's how you develop talent.

[449] And if you don't do that, you don't develop talent in a scene.

[450] And you get more people invested in the idea of stand -up comedy, especially if you have like a local headliner guy.

[451] It's really good.

[452] People like really get involved in like someone who's like a local person who's like really good.

[453] who they think has like potential to you know to break free or break it when they're call them break in break out yeah yeah so you know what i i i say how every every city has a rap star right so should you go off to l .a or new york and try to create your fame and fortune or do you become the best person in that city and so and i think of like i think of rap in that way like you know so if you think about every major city Not every, but a lot of major cities, you can identify who is the best.

[454] And then they use that city as a leaping off point for a more national scene and international scene and so on.

[455] I think rap is very different than comedy, though.

[456] No, no, no. But just as an analogy, right, the idea that you, where is it that you should develop your craft?

[457] When is it that you're ready to go to one of the coast?

[458] Like, it sounds to me that if you have a good club, a reasonable goal would be to become.

[459] the headliner, the local headliner at that club and then try to break into the business more broadly, like, you know, whatever it would be television or film or go out on the road.

[460] Yeah.

[461] No, you just, you seem...

[462] You need to be around other comics that kick ass.

[463] It's super important.

[464] It's important every step of the way.

[465] You need to be around them hanging out.

[466] You need to be around them going on stage.

[467] We feed off of each other.

[468] Yeah.

[469] We feed off of each other in a way that I don't think rappers, I mean, I might be wrong, but I don't think they have to as much because they can kind of judge themselves on the long history of rap nationwide and all of these places.

[470] Well, yeah, I'm sure the development of the craft, but the idea I guess the question is this is, if you were a good comic and you wanted to get great and you were going to prescribe a route for one, would you say, look, you know, stay in Denver and be the best that Denver can offer and then do it?

[471] Or, when you think you're ready head off to new york this is my advice and this is very general okay you could vary depending upon circumstances but i think you should get a general proficiency in a place we can get some stage time okay like a denver or portland or a place that's a smaller place yeah get a general proficiency where you you know you're a general you're essentially a professional you could do half an hour okay then get the fuck out of there okay got to get out of there okay got to go to Beasts.

[472] You got to see Bill Byrd drop in to the comedy store on a Tuesday night and do 15 minutes.

[473] You got to see Joey Diaz go up in the original room at 11 o 'clock and murder the place.

[474] You got to see those guys.

[475] You got to be around them.

[476] There's a certain inspirational heat that you get from being around a crew of comedians that takes your act to the next level.

[477] Okay.

[478] Almost universally.

[479] So I can see that.

[480] It's hard to argue against that.

[481] But if you're, but you need to get the stage time.

[482] right so it's this balance and if you're in austin or portland or denver you do have great comics coming through all the time so you can get that sort of you know you can watch them do weekend sets that definitely they do drop in yeah but you won't see them working on material yeah i see the seeing them working on material and when you know something's absolutely new there's like this spark of excitement that everybody has in the room like say if an event goes on like something happens in the news and then you know someone like chris rock will show up and start talking about that event Right.

[483] There's like a certain crackle to that.

[484] It's not the only thing that's necessary for success as a comedian.

[485] I mean, you could absolutely be a guy who lives in Boise and goes on the road and does great.

[486] But there's something about being around a lot of really funny comedians that has this undeniably inspirational effect.

[487] Yeah.

[488] I understand.

[489] I mean, I'm, I'm interested.

[490] We were sort of, we're talking a little bit about this idea like achievement, right?

[491] So what is it that predicts success in this very difficult business?

[492] I'm certainly not, I don't, there's no hard, fast answer.

[493] There's no black or white.

[494] You know, I'm just saying from my point of view, what I would advise is that, and it's maybe my style and strategy is incorrect for some people.

[495] I mean, it would depend, I would have to really know the person.

[496] Some guys are fine, like living in Austin.

[497] They develop a good little following.

[498] And now, because of the internet, you can get a following just from a YouTube video and then start touring nationally.

[499] I think that's essential as well.

[500] I think touring is another essential developmental tool for a comic because i think one of the things about being a comic is you want to get the most varied input possible if you're doing the same club all the time the same kind of audience you're preaching to the choir and you know the people that happened a lot in boston in boston a lot of the local guys they became really proficient and really good and making boston people laugh yes yes it was a huge trap and then they would go to other places and it would be like they were hamstrung like someone had just like hit him in the kneecaps of the baseball bat like they couldn't run anymore it was crazy to watch i see and that's exactly what it is it's not doing the road enough you have to develop an act that that is yours and then it's uniquely your you know your take on things but it also has your take on things is like a conglomeration of all the experiences that you've had in your life and the more experiences that you have especially as a comic on stage in different places, the more it flavors your performance and how you do it.

[501] Yeah, I think that's, you know, so people talk about this sort of 10 -year rule, you know, that it takes 10 years to get your voice.

[502] And there, you know, obviously there's exceptions, but, you know, I think some of it is just like you need the practice, but some of that 10 years is you just come to better understand the world.

[503] Yeah.

[504] Right.

[505] And so when you're 22 years old, you can be a funny person.

[506] but it's but you haven't you know you haven't learned all the mechanics and all that kind of stuff you don't have enough material but some of it is you just don't really understand the world in the way that you do when you're 32 or you're 42 and um and what you're suggesting though is the more experience you have out on the road understanding what people in oklahoma find funny what people in minnesota find funny what their lives are like in in in texas and and alabama and Atlanta ends up being very useful because of you know i mean I mean, I've been to the clubs in New York and L .A. with the kind of, like, hipster, you know, audiences.

[507] The alt crowds.

[508] Yeah, and it's, you know, it's fun comedy, but it's not going to go very far if you're interested in going far.

[509] Well, it's a very specialized form of comedy.

[510] Like, you're the cool guy in the room, you know, and the cool guy in the back of the room recognizes the cool guy in the room.

[511] And, you know, you're pushing a lot of progressive issues that, you know, are very good.

[512] very debatable in other parts of the country, but you're just getting like a raucous round of applause and appreciation for what you're saying.

[513] And then you feed off of that.

[514] And then you become like super captain lefty and you're going on stage with a fedora on.

[515] Right.

[516] You're talking about being a feminist.

[517] And, you know, it's a lot of what they're doing is just, you know, that's their spot.

[518] They're doing Boston comedy.

[519] They're just doing it in Brooklyn and some hipster spot.

[520] You know what I mean?

[521] Like by saying Boston comedy, I mean, they're doing like a specific style of comedy that maybe they like or maybe works well in their area and then there's nothing wrong with doing that.

[522] I mean, you can do that.

[523] That could be your thing.

[524] You can do whatever the fuck you want.

[525] But I think that one of the great things about being a comic is going to all these weird places and, you know, doing stand -up in Alaska, doing stand -up in Florida, doing stand -up all over the place and experiencing all these weird things and weird crowds and weird situations.

[526] If you just did comedy only in Brooklyn, I think you're going to get a very limited perspective.

[527] You're going to get a very, your art's not going to reach its full potential, if that makes any sense.

[528] Yeah.

[529] I'm very pretentious calling it art. I, no, no, no. I actually, well, I think, I think it can be art. Yeah.

[530] You know, I mean, you know, fart jokes aren't artistic.

[531] They might get laughs.

[532] But if you can make laughs and change the way people see the world.

[533] Or if the fart jokes is so fucking good that it literally transcends the fart joke genre, and it becomes art. That's possible.

[534] I'm doing that with poop right now.

[535] No, you're not.

[536] Send me an email when that happens.

[537] I'd like to, I'll start paying attention.

[538] But, so, you know, actually, but for the humor code, that's exactly the perspective that we took.

[539] So one of the things that we did was say, and this is no offense to you, we said, well, humor's not just stand -up.

[540] Stand -up is a bizarre art form, you know, that it seems like the, quintessential thing that you should look at, but most of our laughs don't come from a guy on a stage with a mic and a fedora.

[541] It's from, you know, our own interactions with our friends and our family and strangers and watching television, watching film and, you know, like seeing the world more broadly.

[542] And then also, it's such a complex topic.

[543] We were like, oh, we can't just look at it in the United States.

[544] We can't be so.

[545] so focused on the U .S. And that's what pushed us to go out and look at this.

[546] So we went to the West Bank and hung out with this comedy satire troupe.

[547] Whoa.

[548] Who has a television show that it's once a week, but during Ramadan, it's every single night for 30 nights.

[549] And so we hung out with these folks.

[550] So these are people who are, they're living in the West Bank, and they're criticizing everyone.

[551] So they're criticizing the Palestinians, the Israelis, the Americans, Barack, you know, like Osama and Obama in the same sketch, right?

[552] Like, you know, these guys are doing really cutting -edge stuff in this place that there aren't comedy clubs.

[553] Like, you're the way that you get professional comedy, there's like two shows on Palestinian national television.

[554] or you need to find it broadcast from Egypt or from Jordan or I'm not sure Jordan because evidently the Jordans aren't terribly funny Jordanians aren't very funny but the Egyptians are like hilarious Jordanians aren't funny so the guy right now listening it's fucking pissed there's a no we talked to these guys and they're like oh yeah there's a there's like a hierarchy of comedy in the Middle East and according to them the Palestinians are about the middle the Egyptians are hilarious really and the Jordanians evidently are like the most serious the Egyptians are hilarious they're very funny yes what do you attribute that to I can't remember I don't know I wish Joel was here he remembers everything here because he writes it all down but uh yeah there's like a long history of uh of Egyptian comedy huh very funny people what about the Israelis do they factor in there Yeah, so, so what was really fascinating was that, um, so we, you know, you have kind of the stereotype of the, of the, the, the, the funny Jewish person, very self -deprecating.

[555] Um, but you don't find that style of comedy in Israel as much.

[556] There's really, um, comedy is a lot more aggressive.

[557] Like, it's the, it's the comedy of the victor, not of the, of the victim.

[558] Oh, how strange.

[559] And so we found this weird reversal where, The Palestinians were much more sort of self -deprecating, and their comedy was much more Jewish in the American sense than you would have necessarily expected.

[560] How bizarre.

[561] It was really fascinating.

[562] That's so strange that it is weird when you think about it.

[563] I've met a bunch of Israelis, and they're very different from a lot of the American Jews.

[564] And I think that that's a big generalization of American Jews.

[565] Sorry, folks.

[566] but the idea being that they're at war all the time and they're constantly surrounded by people who hate them they all have mandatory military service how did you study how like the American Jew came to be like the separate subspecies of the Jew you know like sort of like the Sitka Blacktailed Deer, it's a smaller deal lives in Alaska one thing that we looked at was how overrepresented Jewish Americans are in comedy and so like back in the day it was like 70 % like it was it was an incredible number and you know it's less so now but um those folks have been replaced by by other minorities so african americans even like the rise of the muslim um american comedian post 9 -11 you're seeing this and what it what i think it is is that to be a minority is advantageous when it comes to creating jokes because um what you know what you're doing as i like to say is you're trying to create benign violations you're trying to make things are wrong okay well being a minority helps identify what's wrong in the world because when you have one foot in the majority culture and one foot outside of it you can see the things that seem off strange like it's sort of like why chris rock i think one of the brilliant things about chris rock is his crossover appeal and and some of it was he went to a white high school so he was sort of too black for a white high school but then back in his his neighborhood, he was sort of too much of a nerd, right?

[567] Like, he never fit in either of those places.

[568] And so he could see what was wrong at home, and he could see what was wrong with white culture in a way that when you just buy in totally, you don't see those things that are wrong.

[569] And is the things that are wrong is what's a ripe source of comedy.

[570] Right.

[571] And so if you think about Jewish Americans, well, they fit that model very nicely in a number of different dimensions.

[572] right so like culturally religiously and you know and so on ethically and so on and so and then and now you also have mentors right so if you if you're like looking for someone to look up to you can find someone who's like you right you've got mel brooks making you know right making his way in um in comedy in a way that uh is inspirational and you see it as like oh I can do this because smells done it or right right and so on so but we haven't gone that's about as deep as we went with it but it's a really fascinating idea this this notion of um w b dubois called it tunis right so you have like kind of two identities that's that's a useful thing it's why like it's like you were talking like you were talking about mexico city in mexico city that's just the way the traffic is right but you come there as an outsider and it just seems so bizarre Mexican person comes to L .A. And they make jokes about L .A. traffic about how well -behaved people seem to be, at least relative to home.

[573] You know, you can see how that stuff can work.

[574] Yeah, I talked to my friend who's from Mexico, and she was laughing.

[575] And she was like, they always say, if you could drive in Mexico City, you could drive anywhere.

[576] You know, she was like, I was saying, I can't believe what the traffic is like down there.

[577] She's like, I know.

[578] I came to America.

[579] I could drive easy.

[580] Yeah, exactly.

[581] No problem.

[582] You should go.

[583] So we went to Denmark.

[584] and it's the easiest driving in the world.

[585] Like, we ran out a car, drove all over the place in Denmark.

[586] They're just so polite.

[587] It's a polite, rule -abiding, everything.

[588] And also, there's, like, nobody there.

[589] Like, you know, we're in Copenhagen, and we're just like, where is everybody?

[590] Well, and that's how Boulder is.

[591] Boulder is very polite.

[592] Like, the driving there is very calm and slow.

[593] I want to start honking.

[594] Don't do it.

[595] People.

[596] people here's a problem is this people are too polite at times and as a result people misbehave because they're they don't they feel like they're operating and like with um anonymity because they've come from probably a place where people like are a little bit more aggressive and yeah and so i'm like i need to start using that i'm from new jersey originally don't do it don't bring jersey to fucking boulder don't do it dude god damn you peter mcraw um what you're saying about the outsider, it makes a ton of sense, especially being an outsider on both sides, you know, being an outsider inside the black community, and of course being black, being an outsider in the white community for Chris Rock.

[597] Yeah, that totally makes sense.

[598] Being an outsider, having some, you know, having a lack of comfort, you know?

[599] I mean, it's almost like what we're talking about, about being smushed in together and being cold, and, like, there's something about a lack of comfort that can create comedy.

[600] The Jew thing is fascinating to me because European Jews...

[601] Please don't say it like that.

[602] Well, it's complimentary.

[603] European Jews are so intelligent.

[604] Like, they have a completely disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners that are European Jews.

[605] They're responsible for a great deal of, like, inventions and innovation.

[606] It's incredible.

[607] Like, just as far as, like, European Jews, you look at the intellectual talent pool, it's come out of Europe, Jewish folks from Europe.

[608] It's amazing.

[609] And a lot of those who immigrated to America became fantastic stand -up comedians and were known, like, pretty much across the board as being, like, really intelligent.

[610] Like, you think about, like, I mean, Woody Allen, before all of his troubles was known as a very intelligent guy, you know, very introspective and fascinating guy.

[611] Jerry Seinfeld is, of course, known as being very intelligent.

[612] There was a slew of them.

[613] You could just start there, and Larry David, you can go on to the end of time.

[614] Yeah, so the best predictor of a good thing.

[615] sense of humor is intelligence.

[616] And so, so some, like, in the professional ranks that clearly make sense, because you have to be writing.

[617] You know what I mean?

[618] Like, so you're, so you have to be good at writing and putting these things together.

[619] But even outside of the professional ranks, just to be quick -witted, it helps to be smart.

[620] Because really, what you're doing is creating a situation where you take this thing that seems wrong and find a way to make it okay.

[621] Right.

[622] And smart people tend to be more creative and smart people tend to be better at that kind of thing it's like it's really is the best i mean you don't have to be because you know you can still make fart jokes and so on but you got a problem with fart jokes dude i see what you're doing you get caught in a trap you can get caught in a trap here's that trap the trap is you eliminate a subject matter because you believe it's low brow okay but the reality is there are certain times that is the correct thing to discuss Sure.

[623] And, you know, Ari Shafir has this joke about having diarrhea, and he had to go across this bridge in Sydney.

[624] We were in Australia.

[625] I'm already laughing.

[626] And it's a true story.

[627] And his manager actually told him, look, Ari, it's a shit joke.

[628] And it's a fucking hilarious bit.

[629] And his manager's like, look, man, you got to drop that.

[630] It's a shit joke.

[631] So he dropped his manager.

[632] It's like, fuck off, dummy.

[633] Like, you don't know what you're talking about.

[634] Like, there are certain times where that is the right thing to talk about.

[635] I agree.

[636] I mean, you know, if you give a comic a choice, between saying something smart and saying something that gets laughs they go with the laughs and they ought to that's the currency they trade in but now see I discussed this on Reddit yesterday now that comics have podcasts if they have like something that they really want to discuss it's not funny at all they can do it on a podcast but there was like a real trap that some comics would get into like when they started getting a little bit of relevance especially when they would start preaching on stage and it's gross like they would say things on stage that aren't funny at all to get applause breaks, to get people to agree with them.

[637] Like a TED talk.

[638] Almost.

[639] Or like, you know, you're essentially preaching to the choir.

[640] I mean, that's what you're doing.

[641] And you're doing it on a purpose to like, to set yourself up on a moral high ground or to establish a premise, you know, and then you're going to expand from there.

[642] But the preaching thing gets really fucking gross when you're an audience member, especially if it's like, duh, like a really obvious stuff that you know someone's doing just to get, like, of course we all think that women shouldn't be slaves you know what I mean women shouldn't be slaves you know everybody starts clapping like what are you doing if you don't have a punchline don't say that of course women shouldn't be slaves nobody should be a fucking slave you know it's like that kind of thing is avoided by podcasts because in podcasts you can explore an idea and not have to worry about like the very rigid parameters of like getting a joke or getting a laugh every X amount of seconds right I see and then you can have people like me on yeah we can have people that are way less funny than you.

[643] You've actually got laughs on stage at a comedy club.

[644] I've had like theoretical physicists on where you have to ask them to repeat themselves because you don't know what the fuck they just said or you know really intellectual people with very varied interests.

[645] That's where it's not funny at all and you don't have to be.

[646] Yeah, because there's other, you're providing other it's not even you're providing, it's a conversation that's all it is.

[647] Like when you have a conversation if you're the type of guy that is trying to get laughs all the time when you have any conversation, you're going to have fucking really boring conversations because you're going to limit your interaction to only like that little this narrow gap of humor yeah i see you can't go deep on stuff right you can't go deep on stuff you can't mean look even when you go deep that's the other thing sometimes you're going deep but there's still some ridiculously funny shit in the deepness you know and you can we're human we're pliable we can go back and forth between all of them the idea that you can only be one or the other is like a marketing issue or something yeah i see all right all right i'll embrace the fart joke that's what don't well you're right though for the most part most of the time when someone tells a fart joke they're only telling a fart joke because they they're just scared and they're trying to get a laugh and it's almost insulting as an audience member it's a cheap laugh yeah although it's still a laugh right so if you have the choice between no laugh and a cheap laugh i don't know i saw joie ds fart into a microphone once at the comedy store it was one of the funny things ever saw my life because he was he was totally non -related he's like i'm sorry i got a fart and he just farted right into the microphone.

[648] I would love to see his face during a Tiffany had his queef.

[649] Yeah, you don't want to see that.

[650] Does he always do this?

[651] Him?

[652] Yeah.

[653] Yeah.

[654] It's annoying, right?

[655] There's this girl who does stand up in one of her big bits is she makes air come out of her vaginal cavity and makes noises with it and puts the microphone up to her crotch.

[656] A unique skill?

[657] It's so funny.

[658] I don't know if it's unique.

[659] Okay.

[660] But it's unique that she's willing to do it on stage with a microphone.

[661] Yeah.

[662] You know?

[663] And it's great because she does it at the end of her set, so she's all sweaty.

[664] And so it's more of a wet one.

[665] So it's like, oh, my goodness.

[666] He's 40.

[667] He's grown, man. Yeah, it's...

[668] Do you follow her on Twitter?

[669] Oh, yeah.

[670] Take her on the road.

[671] Oh, you're friends.

[672] I have to follow her and use the microphone right after.

[673] And do you tell a joke about that?

[674] No. Oh, yeah, that's how...

[675] That's you open.

[676] It still smells, yeah.

[677] A little one quickie.

[678] That's not funny.

[679] You should come up with a better joke.

[680] I know.

[681] Yeah.

[682] That was a showstopper.

[683] Yeah, that's him.

[684] That's what he does.

[685] Sometimes it's not good, like right there.

[686] But the point being, it's like, funny is funny.

[687] And sometimes someone will say something that you would say, oh, you shouldn't do jokes on that.

[688] Like Ari's joke about shitting his pants.

[689] That's why he's going over the bridge.

[690] But yeah, you should.

[691] I mean, it was a clever bit.

[692] It's a funny, honest bit.

[693] It is what it is.

[694] And I think that there's been a lot of, like, bad comedy on almost every subject.

[695] You know, there's been a lot of bad comedy on, you know, fart jokes or a lot of bad comedy on, you know, fill in the blank.

[696] Yes.

[697] Like, airplane jokes.

[698] Like, if you have an airplane joke.

[699] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[700] I always hear comics talk about that.

[701] Like, enough with the travel jokes.

[702] Yeah.

[703] You know, because it's just every comic has a travel joke.

[704] but if someone comes along with a travel joke that just knocks your socks off that is what it is it's like someone can have a point or a point of view or a take on some aspect that you haven't considered some unique aspect yes you know uh yes but i mean well so it's like it's yes but isn't it i mean it's really is the thing where you you are trying to be unique right right the ideal situation is you say stuff that no one's saying that they're not thinking about the way you're thinking about it that you're giving people a perspective that doesn't quite seem familiar.

[705] That's the Holy Grail, I think.

[706] And especially in a world where it's so hard to stand out.

[707] I mean, I constantly have people say, oh, do you know this particular comic?

[708] And I'm like, no, I don't.

[709] And that person's very good.

[710] It's just there's so many of them.

[711] And so how is it that you can you know get people's attention and and and I mean I hate to use the marketing term but like cut through the clutter but isn't that the sort of the case with any art form like with music I mean there's so many small bands I know yeah bands that are trying to make it and yeah in the I mean any of the entertainment and world of entertainment I think that's that's probably the case but don't I think that today at least it's the best time to be one of those people they'll be like especially like bands because of YouTube because now yeah yeah now you don't have to rely on the machinery i mean that's the thing that i think is really exciting about comedy um specifically and and entertainment in general is that now you have the long tail right like because it's a big world there's 300 million people in the united states and now there's like some kid in kansas city who never would have found your found you or you know and then he stumbles upon you and he hears about it.

[712] And then you can actually create a following through technology because you're just cutting out the middleman.

[713] You don't need, you know, you just don't, you don't need the channels and you don't need the clubs and you don't need all these things as much because you can reach people directly.

[714] And so then you can be, you can, you can be really narrow because there's enough people out there who might be able to support that.

[715] Yeah, sure.

[716] That's really exciting yeah well there's especially like when you talk about like specific genres like alt comedy there's there's all over the country now yeah where you could you know you could fit in these areas because there's a lot of people that like like a different style of comedy just like there's a lot of people that like a different style of music yeah that's the weird thing about comedy is that the genre itself is not really defining of what it is it's like you don't go to see live music you go to see live rock and roll you go to see live blues live country even if you don't know the artists you essentially go to a club where you know what they're what they're selling yeah that's good point but comedy man you could get guns and roses or you could get barry manelow and back to back yep back to back well the comedy store you'll deal with like 10 comics in a night right and they're all totally different i mean there's all sorts of different takes you know what i'm really impressed by is these uh sort of blue collar comedy guys because what they've done is found a space that's there's a huge demand for and there's not enough people filling it right right you know so if you think about it like you've got all these all comics and they're all they all look like they came from mumford and sons like they're all the sort of the same dude yeah and you're just like and now they're just competing so much and then like these blue collar guys just must be killing it because there's a whole world out there that's not producing enough comics right for the demand well i have a friend who's really in country music uh -huh and i was over his house and they were watching the country music channel it's fucking ridiculous it's it was all country music videos and it's like it was so it's some the worst music you'll ever hear in your life but it's like this culture that they're ingrained in and there's not a lot of comedians that connect to that culture i know but it's like have you ever seen the compilation brian pull up this compilation why country music sucked in 2013 it's fucking hilarious because it's it's it's about what we're talking about we're talking about like hack premises and obvious scenarios and there's formula to success that's insulting to people that like if you enjoy like Merle Haggard you enjoy like some really good countries yeah Hank Williams yeah Hank Williams you know uh whalen Jennings you know that the real shit man and that Johnny Cash and you listen to some of this like really obvious obvious formulaic sort of created shit and it's it's annoying like it drives you crazy so that somebody concocted this video of all the premises in country music and how much they're repeated and how often they're repeated.

[717] Did you find it?

[718] Yeah, I think so.

[719] It's a YouTube video.

[720] Okay.

[721] Do you think it's going to get us pulled?

[722] Yeah, play it on that thing and then just we'll watch it.

[723] You can do that, right?

[724] What's the worry?

[725] We get pulled from YouTube all the time.

[726] YouTube, someone would make a claim against you, say like, if we just do the show, we're fine.

[727] But if we do the show and we show a video, and the video is like, like a snake eating a crocodile or something like that.

[728] Somebody owns that video and then we get pulled from YouTube.

[729] And then it becomes if you get a certain amount of strikes, if you get pulled for copyright violation a certain amount of times, we always take down the video and then edit it out and then put it back up.

[730] But if that happens a certain time, you can get in trouble like this, why country music was awful in 2013.

[731] And this is particularly awesome for me because...

[732] So this is going to be cliches.

[733] It's just cliche after it's beautiful.

[734] It's glorious.

[735] It's a glorious series of cliches.

[736] but it just shows you how hard people are not trying or how hard they're trying to do the same shit.

[737] Or you don't have to try as hard.

[738] That ends up being an open question, though.

[739] Okay.

[740] Here's how country music worked in 2013.

[741] A bunch of dudes sang about trucks.

[742] This is a good comedy.

[743] They drove down old dirt roads.

[744] Here's the quote.

[745] boats and they beg girls to get in their trucks too they only wanted girls wearing tight jeans that's so crazy and they drove the girls to the nearest river bank the sunset moonlight made it all so romantic and there was always alcohol aka good stuff to loosen things up it's Oh, yeah, good stuff.

[746] It's moonshine.

[747] But if every bro tactic failed, they would just call their girl, girl.

[748] Okay, just stop.

[749] So pretty much, why I'd listen to country music?

[750] Well, not that.

[751] That's not the whole genre.

[752] It's most of it, though, right?

[753] But there's an appetite.

[754] Well, it's like just like saying music is like that.

[755] I mean, there's a lot of goddamn pop music.

[756] Because most music pop music, you know, Honey Honey's obviously not pop music.

[757] lot of music that's not pop music it's just yeah sees does a joke about this right like these sort of club like these sort of club songs about partying yeah he has a i haven't seen it about this stuff but it's i mean he's just doing it now with like club music yeah no it's not it's a few years old oh is it but you know the idea is that you're finding these things right resonate mm -hmm people like it and so people keep doing it yeah it's just different versions of it all well there's a market you know especially when you're talking about like going out to like clubs and drinking like drinking in clubs and playing music while people are drinking like shot shot shot shot people love that kind of stuff they love to to be included but you know this is just like you could clear that off man clear all that and go back to the blank screen it's all uh hack premises you know it's like that's uh that's one of the things like you know don't do fart jokes don't do you don't do anything low brow don't do anything so obvious unless you want to get paid right i mean that's like There's a bit of that, no?

[758] A little bit of that, especially in the beginning.

[759] I think with comedy, one of the things in the beginning is just becoming at least reasonably proficient.

[760] And I always describe it that there's like three steps.

[761] The first, and sometimes, they're not all necessary.

[762] The second step's fine.

[763] But the first step is you just figure out what works.

[764] It's like you have a toolbox.

[765] It's like you're just hammering nails and saw and wood.

[766] You're just trying to figure out what works.

[767] So your jokes, you might not even think they're funny at all, but they get a laugh, so you stick with them.

[768] And then once you get good enough, you start doing.

[769] stuff that you actually think is funny.

[770] And then the third step is you start trying to make your ideas funny, like make points.

[771] Some people don't ever get there.

[772] And some of the best ones don't ever get.

[773] Like Mitch Hedberg is my perfect example of a guy who's like one of my all -time favorite comedians.

[774] But he never had, like there was no philosophy behind his comedy.

[775] It was just really hilarious one -liners.

[776] Non -related one -liners, too, and hours of them.

[777] You know, he was a really unique and unusual comic.

[778] in that sense.

[779] And did he, did he recreate himself at one point in his career?

[780] Like the Mitch Hedberg that everybody knows about is not, he didn't start doing that style.

[781] Like, even like the kind of cadence and the way he, I think he changed his voice.

[782] Am I?

[783] No. Is that not true?

[784] No, he pretty much did start.

[785] Yeah, I've known, I knew him for a long time.

[786] Okay.

[787] Maybe I'm misread something.

[788] Well, one thing that did happen is he got development deals and they started doing like the whole sitcom shuffle thing with him trying to develop a sitcom for him and then once they stopped developing the sitcom then he like it didn't work out that the acting thing didn't work out and he really started just touring more and getting more into a stand -up and a stand -up she's kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger and it led to the Mitch headberg that everybody knows now yeah okay I see all right but there's also substance abuse involved in there like a lot of it and that there's some of his style that you could probably attribute to drugs you know know because he had this you mean he had an heroin issue you know and he had this sort of almost lay back heroin style i took a piece of carefree gum an hour later i was still worried it never kicked in you know he had this weird like slick bizarre style of comedy that that's a huge loss that guy yeah you didn't wonder like where would he where could he have gone because he's still He would have been doing the same thing.

[789] He would have been doing the same thing.

[790] He had no, like, dull spots.

[791] Like, if you go and look at through his body of work, there's no, like, bad stuff.

[792] It started off great.

[793] It stayed great to the very end.

[794] He would create new great stuff.

[795] And in my opinion, the hardest way to do it, like the one -liners, like unrelated one -liners over and over again.

[796] And especially, like, bizarre, absurdist sort of one -liners.

[797] Yeah.

[798] Well, you know, more people would have known about him for sure.

[799] He died, I think, in 2000, I want to say three, somewhere around then.

[800] Yeah, before the, I mean, because his stuff is, it's perfect YouTube material.

[801] Yes.

[802] Yeah.

[803] It's like so shareable.

[804] You know what I mean?

[805] And you can, you know, because it's one -liners, you can break it down and have like 15 seconds or 15 minutes.

[806] People eat it up.

[807] He's an interesting guy, too, because there's a lot of stories about him in the early days where club owners didn't quite get it.

[808] Like, when you go on the road, a lot of times, uh, you know, The club owner just cares about putting an, you know, an act on stage is going to get laughs.

[809] And sometimes the act that they'll book for the headliner is not compatible.

[810] Okay.

[811] Like, he worked with some guy, and the guy was, like, singing and doing impressions of musicians, doing fucking flips and cartwheels and shit.

[812] And, you know, he had this crazy big closer that he would do.

[813] Thank you, good night.

[814] And everybody would go crazy.

[815] And then Mitch Hedwig would go on stage with his sunglasses on, and people would get angry.

[816] And it didn't just happen in one club.

[817] it happened in a bunch clubs and obviously you're talking about the guy who i think is like one of the best ever but he would eat shit because he would go on after these guys and no one knew who he was so they didn't know they didn't know that they were going to expect the Mitch headberg style so they saw this guy go on after this guy who was flipping around and sweating and putting out all this effort and they just never it looked like he's mailing it in maybe they just couldn't switch gears you know you know this is this is a really interesting idea like so this is the kind of stuff that i i test for a living right so so what we've been sort of talking about is like whether someone's funny or not or how they develop you know a sense of humor the ability to produce laughs and others but from the comedy club conversation that we had earlier and then this conversation you realize that there's a lot of moving parts yeah right there's a lot of things that are outside of your control as someone trying to be funny and so the idea that you could have someone who was very I mean ideally you do have someone who is funny before you because it warms the crowd up and they're already in a good mood and they're just more likely to laugh now than they were before because their you know their mood state has changed it's you know it's positive and so on but the fact is is that that that can have such a profound effect shows that there's a lot of like contextual factors that are at play that you can't necessarily continue.

[818] control right you know and so that's i've never uh yeah so what i i'm trying to put my finger on what would be the contrast there like why is it that the audience would sort of rebel against him given how good i mean you know he's good so it's not a matter of that i mean if if metallica went on stage and did you know a concert in front of a bunch of metal fans and went fucking crazy did enter sandman and then brought up christina aguilera yeah how well do you think that would go i'm beautiful no matter what they say bitch let me see you touch no no but it would you know if you would if you would go to any sort of a music show it's very rare that you have like completely contrasting styles like that yeah the same stage the difference though is that this is presumably like just a regular audience like it's not as it wasn't an audience that came there for this jumping around guy right right right no it was just a comedy club yeah that's right you know that's the thing like and that's the difficult part of uh developing as a comedian I think for a lot of comics it's like you have to find your audience and if you compromise yourself you don't ever find your audience you become this sort of middle of the road guy with a blazer on like when I first tried to go on stage the first thing I did is try to dress like a comedian so I wore a blazer and I rolled my sleeves up and I wore like a wacky t -shirt and I had like a pin on my jacket like I was trying to like fit into the mold of what I thought of a comedian and I think that if you're a comic it's very hard to become a Mitch Hedberg because of that it's very hard to like do something that no one's they haven't seen why is he wearing sunglasses like why is he he would turn his back to the crowd do like his act to the wall okay like sometimes he would hide behind curtain to do his whole act behind the curtain i'm just gonna hang out back here for a little bit and he would do his act right like that creates arousal though yes right that makes that makes it's unusual that's an interesting way to look at it too you're creating arousal right and the key is just to make sure that the the the arrow is pointed to the positive side right like because because that makes it would make it even worse like if he was bombing yeah that would make it even worse because now it's he's creating negative arousal exactly exactly yeah i mean he was doing well and doing that But like I've told this story before, but it bears repeating Hicks.

[819] I saw Hicks in Boston.

[820] Okay.

[821] And I saw him bomb.

[822] And he went on after a guy who was like a really hacky.

[823] Like the guy was doing like cartoon character smoking weed, like doing impressions of like things that we all knew.

[824] You know, like just standard really like down the middle hacky shit.

[825] And he did well.

[826] Hicks went off from no one knew who the fuck Hicks was.

[827] and Hicks just ate shit for like 45 minutes except for like 50 people in the room.

[828] So it was like a 300 seat room, 250 people leave, the 50 people that are remaining are howling laughing.

[829] It's like the comics in the back of the room and like a few people in the audience, but Hicks never like left that style.

[830] Like he knew this wasn't his crowd and he just plowed through it anyway and found his crowd in the people that stayed because he never stopped like delivering the material the way he wanted to do it.

[831] It was very unusual because I've never seen a guy be so confident bombing.

[832] Yeah, so this idea, so the theory that we use is benign violation theory.

[833] One of the nice things about the theory is it explains the two ways that a humor attempt can fail.

[834] So you're trying to find that sweet spot, the situation being wrong yet okay.

[835] Sometimes you create a situation that's just wrong and people are outraged.

[836] And sometimes you create a situation that's just okay and people are bored.

[837] And so, so when I, when I bombed when I tried stand up, I bombed on the benign side.

[838] My jokes, they didn't go far enough.

[839] You know, I had an audience of like dirtbag hipsters and want to be comedians.

[840] And so the jokes I was telling were they were just too boring and benign.

[841] Because that night people were talking about smoking crack and about abortions and all these kinds of things that were like, you know, just much more.

[842] Unsavory.

[843] Unsavory, thank you.

[844] Risque.

[845] But what you can find is that three people can have three different reactions to the same joke.

[846] So one person is howling with laughter.

[847] One person is totally outraged.

[848] And the other person is like, come on, tell me something funny.

[849] And so what that shows you is that in any one audience, and the more heterogeneous the audience is, the more diverse the audience is, the more likely you're going to get all three of those reactions and ideally what you do what Hicks did was find the people who he hits the sweet spot with and then you know nowadays imagine what you know what happens is that like now you can identify who your audience is they can find out where you are that you don't just stumble into a club anymore people go to see Joe Rogan because they know that that he's going to be funny to them right even though you know you're not no offense you're not for everyone nobody is that's the key if you you know if you try to be funny for everybody you're never going to figure out what the fuck is unique about what you do your sense of humor your style of of looking at the world and i think that's a big part of what comedy is a big part of what comedy is is here's the world through my eyes but if it's not really here's the world through my eyes here's the world through the vision that i think you would laugh at that's not that's not like really your take on things and what hicks had figured out i guess long before a lot of people was just to stick to your guns and they'll find you you know the the fucking field of dreams build it and they'll come if you're funny though like that's the thing like because there are plenty of people who stick to their guns right and no there's they just don't have an audience yeah that's a true that's the true statement right there's there's so many variables involved and like some people would listen to that country music thing and they would love each one of those songs individually and can't wait until they come on the radio again and they're not wrong no they're not wrong it's it's a taste issue it's like what you're saying about the blue collar guys it's like they figured out how to tap into that that sort of unrepresented aspect of america which is monstrously huge huge i mean it's like you find out how many albums are being sold country music albums how many people know that music and it's it's incredible it's like you're dealing with a whole different world that you didn't know existed yes and larry the cable bot Larry the Cable Guy, rather, owns that world.

[850] Like, that guy does football arenas.

[851] Yeah, you know, I, um, I've got serious on my, in my car, and I, and there's like six stations you can, you know, you can choose from.

[852] Comedy stations, thank you, yeah.

[853] And, uh, I, I regularly try to listen to the blue collar station because it's, well, it's different, and it's, like, it's good comedy.

[854] Larry the Cable guy's a funny comic.

[855] It's a very smart guy.

[856] Yeah, he's a very good comic.

[857] That's why I was shocked When a lot of people were like A lot of people were like super jealous I guess Or they felt like he represented racism Or You know homophobia or whatever it was His character did And so like a lot of people like were really derogatory about him Like have you ever like read his jokes Or listened to his jokes They're well written jokes It's a character His name's Dan Whitney Yeah Okay I mean He's doing an act I mean I think about that like with dice clay You know like you just You have have a character and you create a character that can work would be really funny though if he said he got to a certain point he was like okay i got enough money it's time to start turning on these motherfuckers and like he says using using his character to expose like the worst aspects of like southern life and religious ignorance and you know it could be fascinating you know who the other person who i think of is uh russell peters in what way that he um that he's found a niche of, I mean, and like a space like there, you know, it's like Indian people want to laugh.

[858] And so like, uh, and he's very good.

[859] I mean, you know, all this stuff is all contingent on being very good.

[860] Yes, but very much so.

[861] But the opportunities there are just huge.

[862] Well, Russell transcends.

[863] I mean, he doesn't, um, a lot of people know him from YouTube.

[864] His YouTube clips are giant.

[865] Like, he has YouTube clips with millions of hits.

[866] And that's really what made him big.

[867] And he, like, if you go to one of his shows, it's not just.

[868] Indian folks, you'll find people of all ethnicities, because he does so much on race, and he's so likable, you know, he's so likable and he has good points, and, you know, he's just a friendly, smiley guy up there.

[869] You're like, you want to, you want to enjoy him.

[870] Yes, that's true.

[871] You know, he's the fucking nicest guy ever, too.

[872] Like, in real life, he's a sweetheart.

[873] Like, you'll never hear any, I've never heard anybody saying anything bad about Russell.

[874] You know, so when Russell tells you someone's a douchebag, you go, hmm, I bet that person's really a douchebag.

[875] Oh, well, okay.

[876] But, I mean, he sold out the O2 arena in London twice.

[877] Yeah.

[878] He's giant.

[879] But a lot of that, I'm sure.

[880] A lot of his Asian folks, you know, folks from India and all sorts of people, all sorts of different ethnicities, but he definitely found a market.

[881] In the humor code, one of the things that stands out is that no matter where you go, people value laughs.

[882] Like, they, you know, they value it in their personal lives.

[883] They value it in their leisure time.

[884] they're they you know it's an escape it's a way to help cope with a difficult life um and that's like that's fundamental i mean you know it's so fundamental is you find it in in animals so i have this clip uh i have this clip that i show when i give public talks about these researchers tickling rats they actually like put their hand into the cage and kind of roughhouse these rats and the rats emit this sort of chirping sound that signals that they're enjoying this activity.

[885] Right.

[886] So these, and then what happens is, and this blows my mind, is that after they've done this for a little while, then the researcher will move their hands away, and the rats will chase the hand.

[887] So move his hand around the cage, and the rats will chase after the hand, seeking out that experience.

[888] So they want to get that stimulation again?

[889] They want to get that simulation again.

[890] And that, that chasing is no different than the people who are going to go to see your show tonight or watch your special.

[891] You're just a rat tickling hand as a comic.

[892] You know, like it's so fundamental to, to us as organisms to find this kind of, this sort of like ambivalent, arousing experience where you're like right on the edge.

[893] You know, you're right on the edge of going too far.

[894] and you're bonding with other people over it.

[895] It's really fascinating.

[896] I buy all that about comedy, but I don't know how exactly it relates to rats.

[897] How do they know that the rats are laughing?

[898] Like when you're tickling a rat, do we really understand what they're feeling?

[899] Yeah, yes.

[900] What that means to them?

[901] So what they do, they have these bat detectors.

[902] So these are ultrasonic, so we can't hear them with the human ear.

[903] And what they find, they do a number of things with these experiments.

[904] So one of the things that, you can do is you can take that tickling too far you make it too aggressive and those chirps the laughter is replaced by a different vocalization that that rats make when they fight oh so like all right all right enough enough it's like when it's like if you have kids in their play fighting right and then it turns oh or when you're like when you're when you're talking about sparring right sparring is it's scary but it's also fun but then when it turns into a real fight it's just gets scary right right right and so and then they also measure measure these sort of physiological changes in the rats right so their brain chemistry and and so on so there's these these guys at northwestern they're trying to create essentially happy pills so they're they have to understand how do you create positive emotion in rats because they want to create chemicals that can create positive emotion in rats so so the goal of understanding this is because they like most drugs are designed to like um stop negative emotion the but the new like you know the frontier is to create drugs that create positive emotion safely you know right and so so they've been for years been studying rats and they've been creating and they basically uh i don't know exactly how they do all these studies but they they essentially find that this physical experience in rats creates a positive emotional state akin to other positive you can you know you can feed rats and you can do other things to create positive emotional states and they basically find that the brain chemistry following this experience is the same as the brain chemistry following other positive experiences and is unlike the brain chemistry following negative experiences oh okay so they're they're completely monitoring this animal state exactly this is all going on so they're pretty aware of exactly what's going on yeah these guys have been doing this stuff for 20 years but is it possible that it's just looking for affection and like a emo I mean how complex is the recognition of this the state this rat is experiencing it's very simple like it's just it's just i like this right but couldn't it be like my cat like when i pet my cat she you know she rubs up against me and she gets excited it's not tickling her at all well but when you pet the rats you don't get the you don't get the laughter it's really the rough housing that's that's present there by the way i think you're like playing like how you do it's it's play yeah it's total play but if it's play how do you consider i mean i wouldn't consider that like um tickling yeah so um so the way i think about this is that so you have um So if you think about humor from an evolutionary standpoint, is that, you know, if you look at non -human primates, the things that monkeys and apes and bonobos laugh at, it's actually called play panting.

[905] So it's physical forms, physical acts, so rough and tumble play and tickling and so on.

[906] The situations that induce laughter have this sort of harmless nature to them.

[907] So not all tickling, for instance, induces laughter.

[908] You can't tickle yourself.

[909] There's no threat there.

[910] There's no violation.

[911] And if on your way home tonight, some creepy guy in a trench coat tried to tickle you, that wouldn't be funny either.

[912] Right?

[913] So it's...

[914] Why are you looking at me, Jim?

[915] Not.

[916] So the idea is this is that you have this sort of sweet spot with tickling.

[917] You have this sweet spot with play fighting.

[918] And then as humans evolved and started to acquire language.

[919] systems of logic, cultural norms, social norms, and so on, now the world of things that could go wrong started to expand beyond the physical.

[920] Now it could be a misuse of language.

[921] It could be an absurdity.

[922] It could be farting, right?

[923] Like, because whether farting is okay or not okay is just a social norm.

[924] And so the things that could go wrong and the things, the way those things that could be wrong could also be okay also expanded and it's why i think humor is such a complex thing to study because there's so many ways to create this positive emotional experience there's only one way or in rats or a few you know tiny a few different ways in rats but in humans it could be you know slapstick it could be knock knock jokes that have a taboo thing to them it could be you know i mean there's any number and so it could be a parody it could be satire and but all of them across all these different forms of comedy have the same element this sort of thing that's wrong yet okay right that's a fascinating way of looking at that i don't think most comedians ever sort of conceptualize i think we just try to figure out what's funny about something we don't look at it what's wrong but okay and then how everybody sort of agrees that it's okay and that's sort of what like this sort of group recognition laughter is yes and i i i think that there's i think comedians have been doing this successfully for you know for a long time i what i believe science can provide comedy is it can cut the learning curve so imagine you don't need a theory but imagine you had a theory so imagine you said oh i pete i believe you i'm going to use the benign violation theory well it has certain insights so for instance um one one strategy we call the Seinfeld strategy.

[925] So if you think about what Jerry Seinfeld does, is he takes situations that seem okay, and he points out what's wrong with him.

[926] Right.

[927] And, um, and when, when Jerry fails at that, he, he rarely offends anyone.

[928] The other strategy is the Silverman strategy.

[929] She takes a situation, Sarah Silverman takes a situation that's wrong and finds a clever way to make it okay.

[930] You know, Sometimes she puts it to a song and so on.

[931] She's really very non -threatening in the way that she does this stuff.

[932] So if you say, okay, so just that insight alone could be useful to a comic, right?

[933] Like, okay, well, where am I starting?

[934] Am I starting with something that's very clearly wrong to everybody in the room?

[935] Let me figure out the way I can make it okay, you know, a double entendre or misuse of language or find the right victim, et cetera.

[936] or am I taking a situation that everybody sees is okay and I have to find a way to show them how it's also wrong right and so that's like that's not a bad strategy to start from a writing standpoint versus just like oh that right like we you know earlier I said oh that could be a bit right you know it's like okay you're just taking this situation you see that there's something to miss there and that it could serve as like a foundation for a funny joke it's i don't think very many comedians look at it that systematically oh yeah i don't think they do but i'm my point is i think that they could right and i think it could help yeah i bet you're right makes sense i mean being aware of the mechanisms behind any sort of decision -making i mean a lot of times that's one of things that like counseling and therapy helps with people is to be aware of the mechanisms that lead you to go off the rails and go on a gambling binge or a drinking binge just like recognize the steps that are taking place instead of just being caught up in the wave of momentum.

[937] Yes.

[938] And in our constructive side, like, understanding what is or isn't funny about something, it's like almost all writers understand story structure.

[939] Mm -hmm.

[940] Right.

[941] Very few people that enjoy a good book do.

[942] Yes.

[943] You know, they just sort of like enjoy it and go on with it.

[944] But most writers, especially when you're writing like something like a novel, it sort of makes you do that.

[945] You kind of have to.

[946] It's like the heroes, if you understand the heroes, just.

[947] journey, then you can write a screenplay.

[948] Right.

[949] And, but people have seen hundreds of heroes' journeys, but they don't, they don't recognize plot point one.

[950] They don't recognize plot point two, even though it happens over and over again.

[951] What was shocking, if anything, about, like, the process of creating humor when you're writing your book?

[952] Surprising, maybe a better word?

[953] Yeah.

[954] So, one was this idea of how the Palestinians were sort of more Jewish in their comedy.

[955] That was very clearly one of them.

[956] so one of the things that stood out to us was um so we went to the amazon with patch adams and a hundred hospital clowns so patch adams the clown from the movie yes the real patch adams i didn't even know he existed i thought that was just a construct no no he's a real man really yeah and he's like a big man he's like six six he's he's an enormous man and so he's not he's not robin what you think of him looking like robin right but he doesn't look at all anything like robin williams but We wanted to look at whether laughter is the best medicine.

[957] And, you know, the answer to that, obviously, is no. You know, there's other better medicine.

[958] Yeah, antibiotics are way better than jokes.

[959] Yes.

[960] But there's good reason to believe that it is useful, right?

[961] So, so experiencing positive emotion is, um, experience positive emotion is, is beneficial in terms of, of, like, coping.

[962] That's patch atoms.

[963] That's patch atoms.

[964] Yeah.

[965] The actual patch atoms.

[966] Yeah.

[967] Yeah, he's like, yeah.

[968] I've seen him wear that chicken on his head, exactly.

[969] Anyway, go ahead.

[970] Oh, so, yeah, don't pull up the pictures of me dressed as a clown, please.

[971] Should have never asked.

[972] It's really bad.

[973] Should have made no request in that arena.

[974] Whatever you do, don't.

[975] Sounds like somebody wants pictures of him dressed like a clown to me. I mean, I was a terrible clown.

[976] We don't pull him up, but anyway.

[977] Joel was a, my co -author was a much better clown than I was, than I am.

[978] And I mean that in a positive way.

[979] Actually, I'll never say anything back.

[980] about a clown ever again after spending a hunt uh like a couple weeks with a hundred hospital clowns in in like this destitute area of of the amazon um okay so positive motions help having a good sense of humor is beneficial for coping because we'd like people who are funny and we like people who can be can make jokes in the face of tragedy and so it helps muster social support so if when the chips are down more than ever you need your friends and family and if you're if you're able to be a little bit light about it all it helps those people kind of stick with you versus you just turning into this horrible angry sad person right who no one wants to be around right and then the last one and i think this is the most important one and certainly the one that's most understudied is the act of making a joke about a tragedy not only creates positive emotion leads people to like you but it can fundamentally change the way you see that situation.

[981] You can reappraise it in a way that can be beneficial.

[982] So the example I like is when we're in New York, we met with Todd Hanson, who was the head writer at The Onion, when they published their most famous issue two weeks after the 9 -11 attacks.

[983] And what the Onion did, which was so brilliant, was instead of doing this sort of too soon comedy fail and making fun of the victims and making fun of the tragedy, they turned it on to the terrorist.

[984] They made fun of the terrorists.

[985] They had like headlines like terrorists surprised to find selves in hell.

[986] And if you think about it, like, if you're laughing at these terrorists, you've undermined the terror that they're trying to create because you know, it's impossible to be scared and amused at the same time, right?

[987] So what the onion did was like a great, it was great for the American people.

[988] because it reintroduced comedy into the into the culture again it brought them some joy and it also made the terrorists a lot less scary and so in that way like laughter is good medicine because it can serve all these kinds of purposes isn't that why when people are mocked they get furious because you're sort of you're diffusing the what's what's significant about them you're mocking it yeah you're making you're making you're making you're making you're making making them seem less serious.

[989] Yeah, I mean, that's the classic scene from Goodfellas.

[990] What am I a fucking clown?

[991] I'm a clown for you?

[992] Like, it's like people get angry if you think something they do is funny.

[993] It becomes a diminishing aspect.

[994] Like you, and they almost want to fight you to get their energy back.

[995] Yeah, I mean, well, so there's a lot.

[996] So humor, so we think of comedy as like a very positive thing in the present world, but it doesn't have, its roots actually are rather negative.

[997] So Plato and Aristotle wrote about, about humor, but they, saw it as a subversive thing so they saw it as a negative kind of thing really how and how so well so if you think about it what um uh it's sort of like the sneering the laughing at versus the laughing with so there's a long history of ridicule for instance um is that because we're putting down people and so in that way you're uh if you if you you know and if you think about satire and um is that And this was a time where government was seen as a more positive thing than it is nowadays.

[998] And so when you take, when you take, when you, when you, when you're using comedy to critique people, it can be seen as a negative thing.

[999] Right.

[1000] And so, I'm sorry, go ahead.

[1001] Oh, you know, so, yeah, so like over and over again, you sort of find this, you find this idea.

[1002] Like so Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan talked about laughter arising from sudden glory from, from the sun.

[1003] sudden defeat of your enemies and you are you're laughing as in this sort of superior position and and and i mean you can see these things kind of today right so people telling racist jokes people telling sexist jokes people going too far with their bull cosby jokes and making people upset they um that it's not always used for good even if some people are laughing other people are not so it can be a really divisive exclusive thing or it could be the kinds of things that we were talking about earlier where you're bringing everyone together and celebrating some idea to get you know together that's that's fascinating that it used to be thought of as a negative thing it used to be thought of like humor was only for mocking purposes it wasn't like a community gathering like one of the things about a stand -up comic you you sort of think of someone standing in front of a group of friends and you know making a speech and everyone laughing and i've always imagine that that was sort of the origin of it like someone being forced to make a speech somewhere and it's often been attributed to Mark Twain that Mark Twain did like book readings and he did speeches and he was notoriously funny in these and that he was kind of the original stand -up comedian social commentator slash political satirist I think he's one of the funniest people ever to this day he has got lines that could be written by a modern comedian like his line about religion like a religion was was created with the first time a con man men a sucker or something along those lines I'm paraphrasing it right when the oh it was the religion was created the first time a con man made the first the first the first con men made the first fool so if you if you doubt the benign violation theory one of the best pieces of evidence for it is a quote that mark twain wrote he said that the secret source of humor is not joy but there is no laughter in heaven and like that to me that line is really profound because because what he's essentially saying is you need something wrong i'm i'm starting to repeat myself a lot i apologize but but because heaven's perfect because it's blissful it's a wonderful place to be but there's not jokes right you know because because with perfection you do not get comedy You need imperfection.

[1004] Well, we're always struggling to try to achieve this ultimate state of bliss.

[1005] We're always struggling to try to achieve this state of enlightenment and just emptiness and being free of all of our negativity.

[1006] Our worries, yeah.

[1007] But what we appreciate in life is the triumphs over the hardships.

[1008] What we appreciate is, you know, the beer after the long, hard day.

[1009] You don't want to just wake up and drink a beer.

[1010] You're missing the whole fucking point, you know?

[1011] It's like the lottery winner is a classic example.

[1012] someone who's just handed some money, they always wind up losing it, and they don't appreciate it.

[1013] It just all falls apart, slips through their fingers, partially because they didn't earn it.

[1014] They didn't experience all the difficulty involved in getting to this incredible state.

[1015] We have all these zeros in your bank account.

[1016] I think we need adversity.

[1017] It's important for us.

[1018] I mean, well, and you're going to have it as humans, right?

[1019] Because, you know, sort of like the anthropologists of the world talk about how social, like, social interactions are about conflict, fundamentally about conflict.

[1020] And you take away the conflict, and then you take away the source of jokes, right?

[1021] And so, and Twain, you know, identified that in a way that has really had a big effect on me because it is counterintuitive.

[1022] Like you're sort of, you're sort of furrowing your brow over this idea that humor is this negative thing, like, from a historical perspective.

[1023] but even, you know, even today, even the conversations we have highlight how it's just a tool and you could use it for good or you could use it for evil.

[1024] You know, some people could be laughing in others, not, but I think we all agree that the best comedy does one of two things.

[1025] It either unites people.

[1026] It's very inclusive, or it speaks truth to power.

[1027] You know, so you're not putting down, you're not putting down the low status person, but if you are going to put someone down, you put down the high status person.

[1028] Here's the problem with that.

[1029] Sam Kinnison's bit about feeding starving people in Africa.

[1030] It's one of the best bits ever, and it's basically mocking, starving people for being stupid enough to live in the desert.

[1031] It's one of the greatest bits of all time.

[1032] It's like, you're sitting at home, trying to enjoy some food that you made from scratch, and this guy on TV, won't you help?

[1033] Won't you?

[1034] He's like, why don't you help?

[1035] You're right there?

[1036] He goes, you know what you need to do?

[1037] Stop sending them money.

[1038] Send him people like me. Send him people that are going to go all the way over there and go, hey, we just drove five hours with your food.

[1039] And it occurred to us, there wouldn't be world hunger.

[1040] If you people will live where the food is!

[1041] And he goes through this whole crazy bit, which is so wrong and so fucked up, where he's taking starving people.

[1042] Come here, come here, motherfucker.

[1043] You know what that is?

[1044] That's sand.

[1045] And it's going to be 100 years from now.

[1046] Fucking sand!

[1047] We got deserts in America, too.

[1048] We just don't live in them, asshole!

[1049] And it's so wrong, but so fucking hilarious.

[1050] It's one of the best bits ever.

[1051] And it's not punching up.

[1052] It's not punching up.

[1053] By any stretch of the imagination.

[1054] I don't buy that.

[1055] I think that that's, that is, the problem with that, it's like a social justice standpoint and that it's not always applicable.

[1056] There's a, there's a sort of a contract that the audience has of the comedian that we know you're fucking around, all right?

[1057] We know Sam Kenison was in Africa and so kids were starving.

[1058] He wouldn't be grabbing them and making them eat dirt.

[1059] Yes.

[1060] Okay, this is a joke and it's wrong and it's awful, but it's amazing.

[1061] It's amazing because it's wrong and awful.

[1062] And the African kids don't need to be.

[1063] to see it.

[1064] Nobody needs to get hurt.

[1065] We're just all together in this room and we're going to laugh at it.

[1066] So I agree with you that funny is funny.

[1067] And that's, you know, my comedian buddies basically say it's not too soon if it's funny.

[1068] Right.

[1069] You know, like that's the standard.

[1070] So that joke, so here's the challenge I think of, of that joke today is because of social media that a joke that wasn't intended to be broadly consumed.

[1071] But of course it was.

[1072] It was on HBO.

[1073] But, well, okay, so.

[1074] It was just one of his best bits that he did on a young comedian special.

[1075] I mean, it was a, all right.

[1076] Oh, okay.

[1077] I mean, but in, so, so we went to, we actually went to Scandinavia to, to, um, to look at the Muhammad cartoon controversy.

[1078] Ooh.

[1079] And that's an example, though, of now that the world is flat, that it causes problems, because this group of fairly unfunny political cartoons.

[1080] that were designed to punch down.

[1081] We're designed to make Muslims in Denmark feel not welcome and created, you know, peaceful demonstrations there and so on, somehow made their way to the Middle East and became part of a political, basically became a political tool and then, you know, like literally set, you know, the Middle East on fire, like riots, hundreds of people dead and all that kind of stuff.

[1082] From cartoons.

[1083] from cartoons well these were cartoons of the prophet mohammed right drawn by you know danish people your perspective is the first time i've ever heard it put that way that part of the issue was the fact that the cartoons weren't good and that they were punching down yes i haven't heard that before i don't i'm not familiar with the actual cartoons but what i've heard was just that they were cartoons and that religious fundamentalists went fucking crazy and killed people over them.

[1084] Well, yeah, that's true.

[1085] But that's not what you think is...

[1086] That's not the full story.

[1087] That's not the full story.

[1088] So what happened was this sort of right -wing newspaper invited cartoonists, political cartoonists, to submit cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

[1089] So there's nothing in the Quran that says you can't draw the Prophet Muhammad.

[1090] But part of Islamic culture, it's sort of a no -no, right?

[1091] There are some famous depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

[1092] There's one in the Supreme Court, for instance, that is, you know.

[1093] Supreme Court of...

[1094] The United States.

[1095] Really?

[1096] Yes.

[1097] Do you think that's by design?

[1098] I don't know why it's there.

[1099] Seems like an anti -Islam sentiment.

[1100] Like, maybe if they knew that that was a no -no, and they just said, you know, just put it up there to fuck with them.

[1101] Yeah, I have no idea.

[1102] I should know that.

[1103] Do not pull that up?

[1104] Okay.

[1105] Okay.

[1106] So what they did was they invited these cartoonists to draw these cartoons.

[1107] and the idea was it was it was sort of a kind of like freedom of speech editorial was it like draw Muhammad day or something like that they got like a dozen people who actually you know drew these things and some of them were were jokes on the newspaper so this guy Lars Reffen that we met he drew a picture of of this kid named Muhammad and he wrote on a chalkboard in Danish you know this newspaper is a bunch of like you know right wing fascists right so he because he they said they would publish anything that they received okay another guy who drew actually a picture of the prophet with a turban turned bomb so it had like the old cannonball bomb coming out of like the turbine kind of thing that's that's really the one that is like the most upsetting of all of these kinds of things well in initially in Denmark there were protests so about 5 % of the population is Muslim in Denmark it's a very small part of the population and it's you know and they those folks have their struggles there it's you know it's otherwise a really homogenous place they engaged in in demonstration peaceful demonstration over all of this they weren't happy about it kind of liberal folks in denmark weren't happy about it but you know it's freedom of speech and you got to kind of deal with this kind of stuff on occasion and then it sort of went away and it wasn't until later someone essentially brought the drawings to the middle well actually that's not true there was some conversation between countries in the middle east and the government and and the government stonewalled because we know that we know that this didn't have to happen because sweden what did happen when you say didn't have to happen oh was that um so then what ended up happening basically was that folks took these cartoons you know to Syria and so on.

[1108] And the Syrian government used this as a way to get people really fired up and then to turn this into kind of an international conflict.

[1109] But we know that this was largely political because like a year later, the same kind of thing could have happened in Sweden.

[1110] So this artist drew even more inciting cartoons.

[1111] Well, they were actually drawing.

[1112] drawings of Muhammad's head on the body of a dog.

[1113] He drew like three panels of this stuff, and it showed up in an art gallery.

[1114] And that's even more insulting culturally, you know.

[1115] And so, but what happened very, very quickly was the Swedish government apologized.

[1116] They just basically said, we don't think this is right.

[1117] We're very sorry that this happened.

[1118] They didn't get to a place where they were just like, oh, well, this is.

[1119] his freedom of speech, he can do whatever he wants.

[1120] And that's sort of what happened with the Danish government at that time.

[1121] And so it ended up becoming this like really crazy political tool, you know, and it ends up getting spread because of the internet.

[1122] And a lot of people saw this stuff who would never normally have seen it and so on.

[1123] And so in that way, I mean, I, you know, like whether the cartoonists were being insensitive or not, it depends on your...

[1124] But what is insensitive?

[1125] I mean, you're mocking an ideology that's based on animal or based on some shit that was passed on for generation or generation, if you're talking about Christianity, you're talking about Scientology, when you're mocking things, if you find something to mock about something and it rings true enough that people laugh at it, what is insulting?

[1126] Is it insulting that they found something ridiculous about your ideology, or is it insulting that they're bothering to critique your ideology at all or mock your ideology at all?

[1127] And aren't ideologies open targets?

[1128] Well, so I think the, so according to, um, to a political cartoonist, absolutely, right?

[1129] I mean, I think that's the, that, that's what the job of.

[1130] Who's it not?

[1131] Who's it not?

[1132] According to who?

[1133] Well, so I think the idea is this is that, that what you can have is some people laughing and some people horrified, right?

[1134] You know, and so this is the idea, I mean, I mean, it really depends on what is your goal, like, what is your level of sensitivity?

[1135] What is your goal?

[1136] If your goal is to point out what's wrong with the world and to critique the world, then you, then you're just like, well, you know, if you want to make an omelet you got to break some eggs yeah you know and so that's fine um but if you do if you don't want to put if you don't want to punch down is that punching down though i mean is it punching down when you're mocking a controlling ideology that's responsible for some really regressive ideas i mean like the way they treat women the women's rights to vote and drive the just the the wearing of the the the stoning for adultery all the across the board things that are a part of Islam that's that seems to me at least to be a divisive and damaging sort of ideology i don't think it's punching down to mock something well in the i think in the case of the mohammed cartoons it was in part because what this newspaper essentially was doing was saying if you want to be part of our culture you you need to be able to laugh about these kinds of things and so it was it was being used to sort of set these folks apart i mean you know and so So regardless of what you might think of Islam in general, I think the intentions of the newspaper in that case, it's hard to see how that it was terribly, like, righteous, I would say.

[1137] So I'm confused.

[1138] It was, that was the most offensive one was Muhammad with his turban, was a bomb.

[1139] Yes.

[1140] That was the most offensive.

[1141] It was.

[1142] And in relation to an ideology that is, you know, obviously the most radical aspects of it and not supported by a vast majority of the Muslim population.

[1143] But there's been a large amount of suicide bombings.

[1144] Not in Denmark.

[1145] Not in Denmark.

[1146] But across the world that are associated with Islam, radical Islam, jihadists.

[1147] Oh, yeah.

[1148] I mean, look, I mean, you know, take any major religion and you can find a great deal of violence perpetrated in the name of that religion, right?

[1149] Like, it just happens to be, nowadays you're finding it in Islam, but you've seen it in Catholicism and seen it elsewhere.

[1150] I mean, you know, so, uh, look, I'm all for the idea of, um, of critiquing, whether it be religion, whether it be in government.

[1151] I mean, now we're just getting into my personal opinions about these things.

[1152] No, no, not necessarily.

[1153] We're getting into thoughts about what is punching up and what is punching down.

[1154] Like, Islamophobia is a very strange thing that has like recently joined our vernacular.

[1155] Yes.

[1156] And when you, you can mock God, like the, the angry man in the clouds all you want.

[1157] You can mock Jesus.

[1158] I mean, Sam Kinnison had hilarious jokes about Jesus.

[1159] Like people, you think Jesus is coming back and he would go, I think the last thing that Jesus ever said was, oh, oh, not my left hand!

[1160] Oh, oh!

[1161] Like you would go, I think this is the last thing we ever heard from him.

[1162] And he did this whole thing about Jesus and Jesus being married and all this crazy shit.

[1163] And nobody, you know, I mean, he was a Christian, or at least started out as a Christian.

[1164] Nobody, like, accused him of Christianophobia or it wasn't thought of as an affront to a minority group.

[1165] But that doesn't mean that that Sam's stuff wasn't terribly offensive to Christian, to some Christians.

[1166] Some Christians, sure.

[1167] So that, I mean, that's essentially what we're, what we're talking about is like, so is it, you know, it's one thing to make fun of the Pope.

[1168] And versus, like, you know, taking something that people hold dear.

[1169] But why do they hold a deer?

[1170] The whole thing that, that comedy attacks is, what is causing you to believe in this?

[1171] What is causing, what, if I can mock it.

[1172] and I can find holes in it, and you say that that's offensive.

[1173] Well, then you're saying that comedy's offensive.

[1174] No, no, no, no, I want to, so to be very clear.

[1175] So the idea of what I, what I, what I, the point that I wanted to make is that in a world, in modern day, is that a joke that was very funny and intended for this audience that never would have reached them 20 years ago.

[1176] Now, what would never reach another audience that finds that joke terribly offensive and, and, And, you know, some of it is just like, okay, well, that just happens, you know.

[1177] What joke you're referring to?

[1178] Whatever joke it may be.

[1179] Like, whatever happens in Comedy Club X shows up on YouTube and people are like, I can't believe that person was making a rape joke or these kinds of things.

[1180] The Muhammad cartoon controversy is an extreme version of that.

[1181] That these cartoons should have had their, you know, 15 minutes of fame in Denmark.

[1182] They created a bit of conflict, peaceful, you know, protests and so on.

[1183] people feel a little bit you know set aside um and that could have passed that that now is a much more dangerous thing nowadays because information can you know you can go on google and pull them up and see these things you know in that way and that to me that was like a surprising fascinating thing about the world of comedy now i know that that it's impossible to make a something universally funny because people are too different um and uh whether and how you want to go about making your comedy i'm not going to tell someone how to go about making their comedy or not who they want to make the victim and who they want to make fun of and all that kind of stuff i mean that's that's up to the to the artist right but i do i get confused i mean if you're doing stand -up comedy or you're doing satire and political satire and cartoons if that's the most offensive thing i i don't think the issue at all is this cartoon.

[1184] I think the issue is the reaction to satire, the reaction to comedy.

[1185] I mean, if people are really burning things in the street and over a guy with a bomb in his turban, I think the true issue is who are these people?

[1186] And why are they freaking the fuck out over a cartoon?

[1187] That's a complete total overreaction.

[1188] I don't think that's punching down.

[1189] Yeah, I agree with you about this is an overaction.

[1190] The fault lies, though, in the Syrian government in this particular situation.

[1191] The shitsters.

[1192] They got a whole of it.

[1193] They let it happen.

[1194] I mean, this is, this is a place at the time that, that, you know, everybody was under their thumb.

[1195] So they let these riots happen.

[1196] Right.

[1197] They wanted the riots to happen.

[1198] Oh, I see.

[1199] You know what I mean?

[1200] So that chapter in the book reads a little bit like a mystery novel, right?

[1201] Because we're sort of uncovering these clues along the way, trying to figure out, like, how did this bizarre situation actually occur?

[1202] Being at a university and, you know, being an academic and being around, like, really progressive people all the time.

[1203] Do you think it necessarily flavors your idea of what is and isn't acceptable in terms of comedy?

[1204] Because that term punching up, you've used it several times.

[1205] And that's a term that you see all the time when people are criticizing comedians for, you know, really extreme acts or offensive, what they would consider be offensive jokes, even if it's tongue in cheek or what have you.

[1206] Like this concept of punching up is like, it's fairly, fairly current.

[1207] Yeah, I'd say.

[1208] I picked that up from the world of comedy, not from scholars.

[1209] But I do, I do, yeah, I certainly, you know, I certainly, like, spend time in faculty meetings with my fair share of, like, super progressives.

[1210] Indeed, yeah.

[1211] I mean, I'm in a business school, so they're not, like, totally outrageous progressives, but.

[1212] But I can see you, like, hedge your words and you, like, tread lightly on, so, you mean, you dance the, the dance of a man with tenure, right?

[1213] Well, I've got 10 years, so I could go even further than I probably do.

[1214] We need to get a couple of drinks in you.

[1215] You know, that's really what we need.

[1216] Yeah.

[1217] I mean, I understand.

[1218] I get it.

[1219] Intention to me should be everything.

[1220] And if it's your intention to get violent and upset because someone mocks what you think is divine.

[1221] Right.

[1222] You're a crazy person.

[1223] And if they don't make fun of crazy people that are willing to riot and light things on fire, regardless of the motivation behind it, like who started it and who instigated them.

[1224] At the end of the day, a guy.

[1225] drew a cartoon and you want to kill him like that's the humor it's and there's no punching down there that that that's like if that created that that's good that's like mocking the ridiculousness of this civilization mocking the ridiculousness of ideology and how attached people become to them with all that's all it is a bomb and a hat yeah so yeah i would so i'll tell i agree with you in this i agree with you in this way the i met the cartoonist he now lives under armed guard Oh, God.

[1226] And so I, like, I, like, peed in his panic room, like, his bathroom has been converted into a panic room.

[1227] On all of his walls throughout his house are pictures of, um, of him doing this to any religion, more or less, right?

[1228] So, so for him, he's, he's just punching.

[1229] Like, to him, it doesn't matter.

[1230] He's just, like, I'm there to satirize.

[1231] Right.

[1232] And so for him, he's not, like, people might seem as an Islamophob or whatever it may be, but he does this with Christians, he does this with Jews, he does this with, everywhere.

[1233] He's a whole fighter.

[1234] That's what he does for a living.

[1235] Right.

[1236] You know, in that way.

[1237] And so he doesn't think what he did is wrong and he would, I suspect.

[1238] Probably not do it again.

[1239] I don't know.

[1240] It's a good question.

[1241] I doubt he would do it again.

[1242] He'd be crazy if he did it again.

[1243] I mean, he had some guy break into his house with an axe and he had to, like, hide in his panic room until the, the equivalent of the FBI came and shot the guy.

[1244] Yeah, it's crazy.

[1245] Well, there was the guy that got stabbed.

[1246] There was a guy in Holland, was it?

[1247] The guy who got murdered for some depiction of Muhammad?

[1248] It's been more than one attack.

[1249] And that's, look, whenever a religion says that if you draw our guy will kill you, like, that is crossing a line.

[1250] You know, and I think there's this trend in this society especially towards nonviolence and towards recognizing also that the amount of aggression that it's directed towards Muslims is.

[1251] possibly racist and most certainly due to the fact that we have been involved in a prolonged war with the Middle East.

[1252] And I think people are recognizing that there's a lot of aspects of this war were unjust.

[1253] And they segment those people off as being marginalized and to be protected with extreme prejudice as opposed to maybe some Christians who live in Iowa, which were to be openly mocked.

[1254] You know, like, no one gets in trouble for mocking Christianity.

[1255] But if you mock Islam, Yeah, I mean, how many times as people have been in Islamophobic is a strange thing to say, because first of all, you think of it as a racism thing.

[1256] But it's not a race.

[1257] It's a religion.

[1258] It's an ideology.

[1259] And there's a lot of atheists that live in Pakistan.

[1260] There's atheists that live in Syria.

[1261] There's atheists that live in Muslim strongholds.

[1262] It's an ideology.

[1263] It has nothing to do with a race.

[1264] It's just attached to a race because a large majority of the people in that race have this ideology that they subscribe to.

[1265] But it's just an operating system.

[1266] And this guy's only mocking an operating system.

[1267] He's not necessarily mocking everyone that has been unfortunate enough to be indoctrinated into some incredibly controlling and archaic ideology.

[1268] Okay.

[1269] I'm not, do you know what I'm saying?

[1270] I understand your point.

[1271] I really do.

[1272] Yeah, I do.

[1273] It's just the punching down thing, I was confusing.

[1274] I was waiting to find it.

[1275] Yeah, maybe I missed that.

[1276] Yeah.

[1277] So, I mean, I do have a, I tend to think about.

[1278] about these things in terms of like what are their kind of behavioral and social um effects right and i um and again i'm not i i don't think about comedy i'm i'm thinking about like humor like you know imagine humor in the workplace right and in couples and among friends and and all these kinds of things and i generally do believe uh that this idea of the best comedy whether it be professional or otherwise unites people and when it doesn't when it divides people it's trying to keep an eye out for the weak it's trying to keep an eye out for the oppressed that's my own personal opinion that's my own personal opinion like if it's just a matter of getting laughs that's something else but if you want to try to take that laughs to the next level that's how that's the framework that I use in terms of trying to measure a goodness so to speak but that you know I that idea could evolve as I think more about this kind of stuff because some of it is by virtue of I only want to use the start punching up you're like so if you are a liberal making fun of the new Republican Senate you're going to upset conservative Right?

[1279] And so I think what you're trying to say is what appears to be punching up or punching down isn't necessarily the case because there's so many different constituents out there.

[1280] Not only that, there's a lot of people that fancy themselves as being very sensitive and very kind, very open, but they are absolutely vicious in their attacks on people who don't support their ideology.

[1281] And they will call it punching up.

[1282] You will call it punching up.

[1283] Oh, I see.

[1284] But what you're doing is, you know, you have a different point of view on.

[1285] fill in the blank gun control whatever the fuck it is right and because they are deemed to be the enemy you have a green light to attack them yes and in my opinion a lot of it is a lack of a psychedelic perspective and that a lot of these people that form groups they form tribes and they stick within the confines of that tribe I mean this this this is the enemy of religion is psychedelics and when you look at ideologies especially really super rigid ideologies they have to be enforced then the Islamophobe idea like the criticizing of Islam being like a mocking of religion I see what you're saying now do you I do I get it I get it well you're so um I understand what you're saying you're basically saying is like if you that it's not to to say that you can't um critique this religion comedically or otherwise because it hurts some people within it ends up being too narrow -minded because you should be able to of course to critique um right so if you just say oh well you can't do that because you're hurting this group of people well now there there is some great benefit of critiquing whatever system of oppression system of power that exists if you can make someone laugh like if you have an opinion I have an opinion you go on stage and you state your opinion I go well I disagree I have a different opinion if you make me laugh with your opinion I'm almost I'm failing in that forced to consider, but this is not where we're doing, right?

[1286] But look, there's a lot of people that have valid opinions that you might not agree with, but if you're a progressive or you're liberal, it seems that there's an open target to mock them.

[1287] Like, here's a perfect example, is people who don't believe in abortion.

[1288] And I'm, I should preface this, I'm pro -choice, 100 % always have been.

[1289] I think a woman's right to choose is a very important part of our culture, the morning after pill, you know, but the reality is, what is going on?

[1290] There's something in your body that could become a life, and you choose to stop that from taking place.

[1291] Okay.

[1292] Some people have a fundamental problem with that because they think that it's killing a life.

[1293] Right.

[1294] And to pretend that this isn't a debatable issue, I think is completely disingenuous.

[1295] It does become a person eventually.

[1296] I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to do it.

[1297] I'm saying you absolutely should, and it's not my fucking business at all.

[1298] Okay.

[1299] But people who don't believe in abortion will be mocked as being stupid, as being ignorant, as being anti -woman, you know, they'll fucking say the most venomous, vile shit about because it doesn't conform with their very rigid tribal ideology, the tribe of progressives.

[1300] Yeah, I agree.

[1301] When the tribe of Christians, pro -life, they would never consider the possibility that it's just a few cells.

[1302] Like, if I, if I just give you a pill and those three, it's three cells?

[1303] No, it's still life.

[1304] It's fucking three cells.

[1305] It's three cells.

[1306] If we stop three cells, what if it gets to six?

[1307] Can we stop it at six?

[1308] It's a real debate.

[1309] It's a real debate.

[1310] Yeah, I agree with you.

[1311] It's a real debate.

[1312] Actually, it's, you know, if you can take a relative, relativist perspective, you can see how very clearly it's a real debate.

[1313] Like, you can understand why someone would be.

[1314] Yes.

[1315] Anti -abortion.

[1316] Yes, you can.

[1317] I mean, I'm not, but I can understand it.

[1318] I see it, too.

[1319] but to pretend that it that it's that it's ignorant and to to go after it with vile and and and obviously the opposite happens too right it's on both sides it's like you're on the yeah and now where so but so my question for you is where does this stop so let's say so um i i wrote a tweet today that said uh there's a street in l .a called climate change right like i just you know because i saw i pass this ozone street and i thought that would be a funny tweet clearly didn't work not great but perspective context but like you're like all right well how much should we be debating climate change at this point right you know because like in my opinion that's oh it's like it's not overwhelming but it's pretty damn close you know um and so at some point like so in this abortion one I think you and I can agree whatever our own personal opinion is I can see how another person would have exactly the opposite and have very good reasons to believe that.

[1320] At what point does it become a situation where you go, no, you're wrong.

[1321] Well, when it comes to the climate change, the real issue is what information do you have at your disposal?

[1322] Like, are you a geologist?

[1323] Are you, do you have a degree in understanding the cycles of weather?

[1324] Or are you just parroting some shit you read on some wacky, right -wing website?

[1325] I mean, I don't know.

[1326] If you want to talk to someone about climate change, there's so many variables when it comes to climate change that are absolutely incredibly fascinating.

[1327] like the fact that North America at one point in time was under a mile high sheet of ice and that global cooling which has been a part of reality throughout time is much more terrifying than global warming there's all sorts of things everyone's the sky is falling the sky is falling and I think that human beings are disgusting dirty creatures that pollute everywhere we go I've seen eight Priuses I've keeping track of it eight Priuses in my life throw cigarettes out the window we're fucking gross we're gross in a lot of ways a lot of us are gross right so there's There's no debate that we fucked up the atmosphere.

[1328] My debate is how much does everybody say, you know, that global warming is here and climate change is caused by people, how much information do they individually have before they start spousing these ideas?

[1329] And I say very little.

[1330] Oh, I agree with that.

[1331] Chuck Willory.

[1332] Have you ever read Chuck Willery's tweet?

[1333] You remember him from Love Catch?

[1334] Yeah, of course.

[1335] We're right back in two and two.

[1336] He's a whack job.

[1337] He's a crazy super right -wing Obama hater, non -climate change believer.

[1338] I listen to, I read his tweets all the time.

[1339] He was going crazy because of the snow and buffalo.

[1340] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1341] The lake effect stuff.

[1342] Evidence that there's no global warming.

[1343] I'm like, uh, it doesn't work that way.

[1344] No, actually, it's global warming that's contributing to that because there's like...

[1345] Climate change.

[1346] So, yeah, I mean, you know, I'll tell you this.

[1347] One of the things that's been really fun as a scientist is getting to do what we're doing.

[1348] Because scientists are really terrible about getting their ideas out into the public discourse.

[1349] because they're not rewarded for it, right?

[1350] So I get rewarded to write peer -reviewed publications that very few people read, even fewer people cite and use for future research.

[1351] But because I wrote this book and I blog and I do all this kind of stuff, now I can enter into a conversation with more than just other scientists.

[1352] If scientists were much better about getting their ideas out there, But they could actually, because politicians are very good about getting their ideas out, no matter how good or bad the ideas are.

[1353] Scientists are really terrible about it, but they work very hard to get their ideas right.

[1354] You know, that's their advantage.

[1355] And so you see this in the sort of climate change.

[1356] You're like, now they have to rely on journalists to be the sort of conduit.

[1357] They don't do the kind of thing that I'm doing, which I have really enjoyed doing.

[1358] I think this is, I think humor is such an important thing.

[1359] to understand that you need to do the peer -reviewed publication stuff, but you also need to enter into a conversation with, you know, professionals in the public to talk about this kind of stuff, you try to figure it out.

[1360] Yeah.

[1361] Well, I think humor is a weird thing because you could say something and it'd be really funny and then I could say the exact same thing and no one would laugh.

[1362] Or probably the opposite.

[1363] Yeah, but it would be whatever.

[1364] You know what I'm saying?

[1365] It's like everyone has their, whatever it is about them that makes them.

[1366] them funny like and that's very intangible there's some weird shit like there's uh there's some some things that would work with some comedians and if you would write them down on paper you would say like Mitch headberg again I hate to go back to him but a lot of this stuff if you wrote it down on paper and then read it you'd be like that's not funny at all don't use that on stage but when he does it it's genius there's something about personality charisma all these weird intangible things that are very difficult to measure.

[1367] And as a scientist, how do you account for that when you try to like quantify what is funny or analyze the components of funny?

[1368] So it depends on the question.

[1369] So if the, so in some cases, that's error, right?

[1370] So in some cases, we're not interested in the role that the person plays.

[1371] And so what we do is we just randomly assign people to one of two tasks, and so the, hopefully you get the same number of Mitches on the right as on the left, right, on, you know, one group as in the other group, and that evens itself out.

[1372] When it comes to understanding these sort of individual differences, these sort of personality differences and so on, that's a lot harder because you can't randomly assign someone to be like Mitch or like Joe, you know.

[1373] Now you have to measure it.

[1374] And any time you have to measure some something that introduces another level of error right because how is it that you can measure it accurately like reliably yeah and so a lack of reliability influences your um you're the validity of your conclusions that you can um that you can draw from so i have a particular in my own research i try to avoid individual differences as much as possible because you're now you're not manipulating them you're measuring them and anytime you measure versus manipulate it It just makes life a whole lot harder.

[1375] Where I'm headed, though, I have to pay attention to individual differences because what we're doing in Hurl, so for six years we've studied what makes things funny, the next six years we're going to try to make people funnier.

[1376] That's what we're going to be doing.

[1377] Funnier?

[1378] Yes.

[1379] Can you help me?

[1380] Sure.

[1381] I'm writing a new act.

[1382] I just released my old act.

[1383] I have to write a new act.

[1384] How do I get funnier?

[1385] We can, we can, that'd be great.

[1386] I would love to do that.

[1387] I've been using mushrooms.

[1388] with limited success.

[1389] No, but that's, I mean, you know what, I can't answer that question for sure because no one's ever done that research before.

[1390] Right.

[1391] That's where we're going, though.

[1392] But to be able to do that, we're going to have to measure individual differences because you're going to have to figure out how funny someone is at point A, and then measure them again at point B, and if you're going to have to understand, like, what they're good at?

[1393] What are they not good at and so on?

[1394] And so the answer, my quick answer is, you've got to measure it, and it's very hard to do, but that's where we're headed measuring it and the ability to make someone funnier though like what would you do would you like analyze their act and say like if you did it this way or maybe you should approach it that way like you would you do it on a like a delivery basis a routine basis bit by bit right so um so you have to have the proper control right so to me i think that the best control um i have this idea for this project I want to do a TV special on this thing.

[1395] You do, you take one group of people and you, you commit them to the kind of typical comedy -enhancing tools that exist in the world, right?

[1396] So they do an improv group, they do a stand -up thing, they read some books about how to do this stuff.

[1397] Like, you expose them to funny people, you know, who do it for a living and get some coaching, right?

[1398] That's probably the only things that exist if someone really wanted to become fun.

[1399] The only things that exist, but unlike, say, carpentry, there are certain people that just won't be funny.

[1400] I struggle to say that because I've seen guys get much better.

[1401] Yes.

[1402] But there's a certain level of cluelessness that some folks possess that's inescapable.

[1403] So now, if the goal is to create funny stand -up comedians, I agree with you.

[1404] If the goal is to create someone who is more funny now than they were before, then I say, well, maybe you're right because some people are just, they're just terrible in public and they don't think, but could I get someone to send funnier emails or be funnier with his kids, you know, or to be a better manager to, you know, so some of it is a matter of identifying where is a person's strengths, what is the medium, right?

[1405] And so, so when I say, improve someone's sense of humor it can be along many different dimensions right i see i don't think the goal is to make funnier stand -up comics i think like we have plenty of funny stand -up comics and the system works pretty well but we have like a lot of like really crappy unfunny customer service agents i don't think it's gonna i think that they would have to be super focused on it but i think there is a potential in improving comedy look yeah even professional chess players and i mean think about all the incredible disciplines that are involved that need coaching even gymnasts when they're at a gold medal level they still need constant coaching boxers world championship boxers still have coaches bernard hopkins is 49 years old he still has professional coaches that work with them that are constantly analyzing technique and comics are on their own i think what you're doing if a comic would uh be open -minded like a lot of comics are very protective of the creative process and they're renegades and like what the fuck do you know when we see your five minutes.

[1406] Go ahead, do five minutes and then tell me if you could tell jokes for me or correct my jokes.

[1407] Joe, let's make a show.

[1408] A show?

[1409] What kind of a show?

[1410] Take comics and get them better.

[1411] Use science to make them funnier.

[1412] Yeah, I don't know what you know.

[1413] It would work with some folks.

[1414] I think it would.

[1415] Some open -minded folks.

[1416] So I'll tell you one of the...

[1417] I have an intervention idea, not for comics, but for regular everyday people that I believe will help.

[1418] And it's facilitating what we call a growth mindset.

[1419] So there, so you can roughly take a person's belief system about their skills and put them in one of two categories, either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

[1420] So this is worked by Carol Dweck, a social psychologist.

[1421] A fixed mindset believes that you're just sort of born that way.

[1422] And so if you have a fixed mindset about intelligence, for instance, then an intelligence test is just a race to see how smart you are.

[1423] It's just a ranking system.

[1424] And if I rank higher than you, then I think I'm smarter than you.

[1425] And I think that that will always be the case.

[1426] But a growth mindset, a test, an intelligence test is just a benchmark.

[1427] It just tells me how smart I am relative to you right now, but it shows me where I can go in terms of getting smarter.

[1428] You can imagine having a fixed or growth mindset about shyness, for instance.

[1429] Some people believe you're just shy.

[1430] And other Humor is, I think, fits.

[1431] I think most people have a fixed mindset about their sense of humor.

[1432] I think that they just like, well, this is how funny I am and this is just, that's the way it'll be.

[1433] Right.

[1434] But if you can convince them that they can become funnier, if you can transform them from having a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, all of a sudden, that opens up the possibilities that they'll try to do the things to actually become funnier.

[1435] What variables do you think you have to address to make someone funnier?

[1436] I have my ideas on this, but I'm curious just to, like, what your thoughts are?

[1437] Like, what variables would you have to address to try to make someone fun there?

[1438] No farting.

[1439] To get more farting.

[1440] You have to leave soon?

[1441] I do.

[1442] Okay, don't worry about it.

[1443] Okay.

[1444] Five more minutes?

[1445] Is that cool?

[1446] Yeah, we're almost done anyway.

[1447] We run out of time at 3 o 'clock.

[1448] Oh, you do?

[1449] Yeah.

[1450] This has been three hours.

[1451] Not crazy?

[1452] Yeah.

[1453] Flies by.

[1454] I did not, I did not expect that.

[1455] What needs to be addressed?

[1456] I want to hear what you have to say.

[1457] Self -awareness.

[1458] one of the big things especially with men we call that self -monitoring in the literature yes men are very clueless about how other people see them because a lot of men go by they're like on an ego momentum right you know and especially if they're accomplished in any way like if they're a manager and have people that have to listen to them it's one of the things that you see happen to people that become famous as well is like when they go some like it might have been what happened to cosby I'm not actually write this down yeah I'm serious do self -awareness especially with men is a real issue one of the most annoying things is someone who's a guy who thinks he's funny who's not funny at all and tries to like you know crack jokes and they're just like super obnoxious and you don't see like have you ever seen a real boorish guy who's not funny at all but who is like maybe a manager or somewhere and he tries cracking jokes around a female employee right who might be smarter than him but has to listen to this fucking idiot because she works for him she's like oh god like that is the complete total opposite of funny.

[1459] The only way to get that guy to understand how other people would see him, it's like you'd have to point out, like, you'd have to like, see you got to look at yourself the way someone else would see you.

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] Do you try to actively work on your flaws?

[1462] Do you try to actively assess how you're being perceived by others?

[1463] Right.

[1464] I agree with that.

[1465] That's very nice.

[1466] Because what it does is it turns someone's attention to their audience.

[1467] Yeah.

[1468] And if you want to be funny, you can't just think about what you find funny.

[1469] Right.

[1470] You know, I mean, especially like in a you know mix setting well you can but you have to figure out a way to get other people to see your point of view yes that's nice like the world doing stand -up comedy like one of the tricky aspects of it is like how do you get someone confident enough to let you take them on a ride so yeah we do this we've been experimenting with this um we just started running the study where we're looking at um these we use these reflection tasks these there's like a diary study basically So you have someone for like two weeks, every day at the end of the day, do one of two things.

[1471] They either talk about what I laughed at and why or another one.

[1472] So we call that Wila for short.

[1473] And then we have Wola, what others laughed at and why.

[1474] And what we're doing with this study is to see is one better than the other at getting people to better appreciate humor and better produce humor.

[1475] And so what you're suggesting is that WOLA, what others laughed at and why, would be a more effective intervention than WILA, what I laughed at why.

[1476] Because what a WOLA diary study does is it gets you to think about what other people are finding funny, not just what you think is funny.

[1477] And so it makes you more aware, in a sense.

[1478] Sort of, yeah, but not even what others laugh at, but how others perceive you.

[1479] because it's the it's a again it's like who's the messenger sort of a thing because there are some ideas that if you gave them to the hands of a skilled comedian they could betray those ideas and have it be really hilarious whereas there's other people who would bring up the same joke and they would be thought of as a real asshole or short -sighted or insensitive yes it's a matter of how much do i trust this person's intelligence and how they're going to a tackle a concept you know if you're talking if someone's on stage it's like pat and oswald very measured intelligent guy who's curious and he's going to look at something and go why is it that and you're going to go I want to know what he thinks about this subject I'm going to allow him to think for me but if it's someone who's like a really crude open mic are tackling the same subject they might have a good point but they enter into it ham -handedly they don't understand how the audience sees them they're too maybe they're too over enthusiastic they look nervous on the mic you know there's all these variables or boorish like being an account manager and these people have to listen to you and you know that's a yeah so one of the things that i talk about like a good starting point is just um make fun of yourself just something like a very simple this is you know um the self deprecation right because it almost fits the the definition of a benign violation like you're pointing out something that's wrong with yourself but because it's it's you you can do it right it makes it okay and that can lead to you know it gets laugh a lot, it leads to liking, you know, you're not worried about offending people, at least typically in this way.

[1480] And so you can imagine sort of three types of intervention.

[1481] So some of them are tactics like that, you know, develops a little bit of self -deprecation.

[1482] Another one is these sort of like changing one, the way if someone thinks about the world and about themselves that may lead them to um to pursue um to pursue um to pursue improvement and then this other one which i think like is just like in general is like you give them um an understanding of the world of humor that they don't understand they don't get it like most people haven't thought hard about humor the way comics have they haven't they don't really think about these individual differences.

[1483] They don't think about this punching up, punching down.

[1484] They don't think about how it might have its roots in negative emotion.

[1485] I mean, excuse me, negative experiences.

[1486] They don't, right?

[1487] They don't think about the two ways that it can fail, et cetera.

[1488] And so some of it is like you give them a crash course to understand this topic.

[1489] You get them to believe that they can get better at it.

[1490] And then you give them a variety of different strategies and tactics by which to improve it.

[1491] And then you force them to practice.

[1492] Because it's not going to happen overnight.

[1493] It's going to take a long time.

[1494] Like in the same way that things like meditation and gratitude and so on could be.

[1495] So you can make people more compassionate.

[1496] You can make them more gracious, have more gratitude.

[1497] You can do all these kinds of things.

[1498] But none of these interventions happen quickly.

[1499] They take weeks and months to do.

[1500] It's a practice.

[1501] Yeah.

[1502] And I think that the growth of any art form dependent upon what your starting point is, is about analyzing the effectiveness of the previous strategies and finding out where the holes in the game are.

[1503] Yes.

[1504] The beautiful thing about comedy is you could watch other people do it well, and you go, oh, he's nicer than me. You know, oh, he smiles on stage, right?

[1505] She smiles and, oh, she starts off making fun of herself and then makes fun of other people that are similar to herself.

[1506] I see what she's doing.

[1507] Yes.

[1508] You know, and that's something that it requires you, again, it requires you to, analyze yourself.

[1509] And if you're not analyzing yourself, if you're, if you're going through life with like, especially like eagle binders, if you put up ego, the worst thing is when a comic bombs.

[1510] And you go, how'd your set go?

[1511] You're good.

[1512] I did really good.

[1513] The fuck you did.

[1514] I was there, stupid.

[1515] I saw that.

[1516] You can, you're not going to get good if you believe that you did good when you ate shit.

[1517] Yeah.

[1518] No, you'll never.

[1519] Oh, yeah, there's research on this.

[1520] Yeah.

[1521] They call it unskilled and unaware.

[1522] The idea is this is that, that, that incompetent people are doubly cursed.

[1523] So they're cursed with their incompetence, but they're also cursed with the inability to recognize their incompetence.

[1524] And so you never get better as a result of it all.

[1525] And so those people make lousy comics.

[1526] I used to do a bit about dumb people, out fucking smart people, and that explains the pyramids why they're around, there's nobody in them.

[1527] But one of the parts of it was about, one of the things about being dumb is that you don't realize you're dumb.

[1528] Like, that's part of being dumb.

[1529] Like, there's a lot of, like I would say, there's a lot of dumb people right now that are laughing at this joke because they think I'm talking about somebody else because you don't realize you're dumb because it's a part of being stupid unaware so I'll send you the paper there's research that they do this what is the term again would you say unskilled and unaware unskilled and unaware it's like a double curse it is yeah yeah that's it's true like objectivity and introspection yeah they're important for anything it's sports for writing like your friend was talking about like your friend who wrote the chapter, then rewrote it, not good enough, rewrote it, rewrote it.

[1530] That's the ability to analyze your work.

[1531] That's super critical for creating something.

[1532] Yeah, I agree.

[1533] But there's also, you can overanalyze.

[1534] And you can get to a point where it's just like, you fucking hack this diamond down to like a grain of sand.

[1535] You're like, it's not ready.

[1536] Yeah, the question is, when do you get to the flat part of the curve?

[1537] Yeah.

[1538] Most people, they're not patient enough to get to the flat part of the curve.

[1539] Mm -hmm.

[1540] Right?

[1541] That's the big issue.

[1542] There's also an issue with when do you release a piece of material and put it like on an album or in a CD or whatever.

[1543] Because when you get to a certain point, it's perfect.

[1544] But sometimes you're on the way there and you record it then and then you do it afterwards.

[1545] You're like, fuck, I have all these taglines and now it's better.

[1546] Like there's a growth process to performing stand -up.

[1547] And one of the aspects of stand -up that a lot of people find is that there's only one way to get the jokes better.

[1548] You have to do them in front of an audience.

[1549] And they sort of like find their own life.

[1550] in front of a crowd.

[1551] Like, when I'm creating new shit, I will do a bunch of different versions of it.

[1552] And sometimes I just, I'll just say, let me try it backwards.

[1553] You know, maybe let me flip it up this way.

[1554] Let me add something ridiculous to it.

[1555] Let me dig a hole in the beginning and see if I could pull myself out of it.

[1556] Right.

[1557] Let me take them down a trick road where I, you know, I fake them out and then sneak in the back door with all this stuff.

[1558] It's like, it only works on stage because you can only do so much of it in front of a notepad or a computer.

[1559] Yeah, I agree.

[1560] It's a weird art form and that it requires.

[1561] requires other people's points of view.

[1562] Like, you could make an awesome song on your own and then go on stage I just wrote this last night and just play it.

[1563] Going to give you some of that good, good feel good stuff.

[1564] Get in the back of my truck.

[1565] You know, you could, you know what I'm saying?

[1566] I recognize that as a callback.

[1567] Yes, yes it is.

[1568] Isn't it weird having a scientist analyzed comedy?

[1569] You know, I think this is a fascinating subject, man. I know you're out of time, but thank you very much.

[1570] And it's cool just to someone looks at comedy like that because I think it has really been anybody before you that's done it like that thanks yeah it's been great the humor code people can buy it on amazon .com they can buy is it on do you have a website humorcode .com humorcode .com and Petermograud .org as we discussed petermograud dot org and this hurl thing what are you going to do with this and when can people expect to participate or can they?

[1571] You know I get emails sometimes people like oh do you need subjects I'll be a subject I don't know that's a tough want to say this stuff takes forever takes years okay we'll get it to me we'll put it up online you know we'll tweet it and let everybody know that'd be great and go buy his book folks he knows some shit maybe we can help you young comedians thank you brother appreciate it man cheers peter mcgraw ladies and gentlemen all right goodbye