The Art of Manliness - #137： How to Be Funnier With Peter McGraw

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so here's a

00:00:18.980 question that's played philosopher since aristotle he actually grappled with this question what makes

00:00:23.680 something funny and for that matter why do we laugh in the first place because if you take a

00:00:27.940 step back laughing is kind of weird right you're smiling you're making these weird noises you're

00:00:32.260 breathing heavy what's going on there well my guest today went on a worldwide tour to uncover the

00:00:38.780 answers to these questions his name is peter mcgraw he is a behavioral scientist out of the

00:00:43.480 university of colorado and he co-wrote a book called the humor code and in it he highlights all this

00:00:49.420 research that's being done about humor and as well as his own research that he's done on humor what

00:00:55.440 figuring out what makes things funny and is he actually created a humor lab at the university

00:00:59.300 of colorado to figure out scientifically what makes things funny and he highlights this all in

00:01:04.040 his book it's a really fun book and also you get some really great insights about humor and what you

00:01:08.180 can do to become funnier so today in the podcast we're going to discuss some of the research that

00:01:12.320 peter has uncovered and we'll also talk about some practical tips that you can implement today

00:01:16.000 to be a funnier man without further ado peter mcgraw the humor code

00:01:20.700 peter mcgraw welcome to the show thanks for having me all right so you are a psychologist

00:01:33.740 behavioral scientist who uh has spent some time studying humor how did you get involved like what

00:01:40.280 made you decide i'm going to study figure out like what makes something funny how did that happen

00:01:44.220 uh well i wish i could tell you that i had this like lifetime passion about comedy and uh although

00:01:51.320 i i knew that i couldn't become like a stand-up comic i thought i would i would i would understand

00:01:57.500 it from a scientific standpoint but it's it's really not that interesting a story it actually

00:02:02.740 just really comes down to being asked a question in a talk in which i had no i had no answer for

00:02:10.540 so i i was giving a talk at tillane university this is now eight years ago and and presented a

00:02:19.120 funny story about someone engaging in immoral behavior and the audience laughed and someone

00:02:25.340 raised their hand and said why are we laughing at that you just said this is immoral and that people

00:02:30.120 react with anger and outrage at immoral things and yet we're we're experiencing positive emotion why is

00:02:36.280 that the case and i at that point i had been studying emotions for more than 10 years

00:02:41.960 claimed to be an expert and couldn't answer that that question and that's set me off on this uh this

00:02:50.220 sort of amazing ride um studying humor and traveling the world and and and trying my hand at stand-up

00:02:56.460 comedy actually yeah yeah we're gonna get to that your your your attempt your your yeah your stand-up

00:03:01.660 comedy experience um but i was surprised in your book the humor code is that there's actually like

00:03:07.700 some serious scholarship being done about humor i'm not and i'm by serious i mean like really serious

00:03:14.420 um can can you talk about some of this research that goes on about humor sure yeah um it is a little

00:03:22.920 bit of a juxtaposition right so to to approach such a light-hearted topic in in a serious way and

00:03:29.760 there and there are serious debates actually this is this question is an age-old question uh it goes

00:03:35.140 back 2500 years to plato and aristotle and frankly people a lot smarter than me have been trying to

00:03:42.180 crack the humor code since you know greek philosophy um so freud wrote about it hobbes wrote about it

00:03:50.500 emmanuel kant wrote about it you know even even um humorists like mark twain and and uh mel brooks have

00:03:57.360 written about it um and so it's it really is a puzzling question there's a small set of scholars

00:04:04.100 in modern day um they actually have their own professional society the international society

00:04:12.280 for humor studies uh that take this this topic very seriously and and and debate this stuff and

00:04:18.680 review each other's papers and and so on um those people some of them are behavioral scientists like me

00:04:25.020 some some of them are are linguists and and uh and historians and um philosophers and so on it's

00:04:34.360 actually a sort of quite diverse group of people um i'm really an outsider uh relative to those folks

00:04:41.240 but but they operate just like this just like the physicists and the psychologists and the sociologists

00:04:47.080 who are trying to explain um you know hard science or soft science puzzles yeah and i guess it's they're

00:04:53.540 still puzzling with that that question or grappling with it uh yeah i mean i believe that if they

00:04:59.720 listen to me they could move on yeah okay there you go i just need to read the humor code they said

00:05:04.900 you just read my papers um i'm obviously i'm exaggerating um but i i do think that there was

00:05:12.380 uh i i felt like when when i approached this this question i i felt like i had one

00:05:18.380 no that's not true i had two advantages um compared to to this uh to people who've tried to

00:05:27.140 to understand humor historically and and the people who are trying to understand it in present day

00:05:31.700 so relative to the people who are trying to understand it historically i could run experiments

00:05:36.520 right so so i even created a lab a behavioral lab called the humor research lab designed

00:05:42.580 to be able to run experiments and experiments is what differentiates psychology from philosophy

00:05:50.920 right you're going from doing thought experiments to doing real experiments and that's a huge

00:05:56.460 advantage because you can actually test your ideas the second advantage that i had was that i was an

00:06:02.280 outsider that is that i hadn't no one had ever sat and taught taught me on day one of graduate school

00:06:10.340 what people believed made things funny and so i actually had 10 years to sort of try to understand

00:06:16.740 emotions uh more broadly and then got to approach this question from that perspective and that that

00:06:25.240 has proven to be a to be a really valuable um advantage i believe yeah so you didn't have to deal

00:06:31.100 with the the humor dogma that might exist out there exactly yeah you know like there's there's like

00:06:36.300 this long history of of i think pretty good theories but but they're not they're not they're not strong

00:06:43.120 theories anymore and but if you if you're taught those it's hard to sort of unlearn them yeah and so

00:06:49.980 so that was a that was a really useful thing i mean in science this happens all the time it's not the senior

00:06:56.420 most you know it's not the 65 year old professor who's who needs to finish this puzzle right before he

00:07:05.360 retires you know it's not that's not the person who has big insights it's actually the person who

00:07:10.340 has enough knowledge but is still kind of fresh enough to take a a new perspective um and and i

00:07:19.240 think that ended up being the case here gotcha so let's get into uh some of your findings um before

00:07:25.140 we get to the the what and how of humor first question is like why why does humor exist in the

00:07:30.640 first place like why do we laugh because like if you step back and look at it's kind of a weird thing

00:07:34.340 right that we do we just sort of just make these weird noises gesticulations we smile

00:07:40.220 breathe pant why do we have that it is yeah it i mean and so to answer that question you have to

00:07:50.060 answer sort of a a broader question of like well why what is like the function of humor more generally

00:07:56.420 like not just the behavioral expression of it laughter but also then why is it why does it feel so good

00:08:03.720 you know what i mean and why is it that we we point at certain things and say that's funny

00:08:07.960 and not point at other things and and and say the same thing and and it is that actually the idea of

00:08:14.980 laughter is actually one of the great hints at at understanding what it is that makes things

00:08:20.700 humorous because for instance the fact is that that you don't need language to indicate to someone

00:08:27.820 else that something's funny you don't have to be able to say that's funny for someone to know that

00:08:33.900 you're finding something amusing right and so um so not only do can you express this cross-culturally

00:08:41.160 for instance but babies for instance can express this you know prior to the development of language and

00:08:49.080 this is the real mind-blowing stuff is that other mammals do the same thing engage in this so you

00:08:56.240 don't so this is a very primitive communication tool and it's it's one that we actually share

00:09:02.460 uh with mammals most notably non-human primates like monkeys and apes and bonobos and so on so i'll give

00:09:10.380 you my quick answer to why we laugh sure and it's this it's that we're signaling to others that a

00:09:17.640 potentially threatening situation is actually safe we're signaling to others the situation that seems

00:09:25.620 wrong is actually okay we're signaling to others that something that seemingly doesn't make sense

00:09:32.600 actually makes sense or what we call in the humor research lab a benign violation gotcha and so this

00:09:40.500 leads you this leads into like what makes something funny right or what makes a joke funny or a situation

00:09:46.540 funny it's this whole benign violation theory yes that you have that there's these two appraisals that

00:09:53.320 something's wrong yet okay and and not only is the theory really good at at kind of pointing to the

00:10:00.660 things that are funny it actually does a nice job of of explaining when things are not funny when there

00:10:08.700 will be no laughter and uh and that's actually a problem with a lot of the prior theorizing is that

00:10:15.140 they were often very good theories that if you looked at only at funny things

00:10:19.260 they seem to have those conditions but when you you know when you think about telling a joke

00:10:25.300 you know telling a joke is not an easy thing because it's actually more likely than not you're going to

00:10:32.720 fail because there's more ways to fail than there are to succeed you can offend your audience and is one

00:10:38.820 way to fail and you can bore your audience uh is another way to fail and in one case you've you've

00:10:46.580 created a situation that's just wrong there's nothing okay about it in the other situation you

00:10:51.060 create a situation that's not wrong enough it's just okay so you're constantly finding this sweet spot

00:10:56.840 as a joke teller uh or as a consumer of comedy trying to find the right sitcom or rom-com or the right

00:11:07.560 comedian who's able to find that that sweet spot of wrong yet okay for for your particular tastes

00:11:15.700 what's like sort of a a very brass tacks example of a comedic uh something that's wrong but not wrong

00:11:23.500 okay so let's actually step back let's talk about our let's talk about our little furry friends

00:11:27.900 all right so let's talk about about um apes and and let's well i guess they're not that small but

00:11:33.320 let's talk about apes and let's talk about rats for a moment okay uh so they they also laugh

00:11:41.780 it's not it's not actually uh laughter it's often called play panting um in the case of apes and in

00:11:48.960 the case of rats i don't even know if there is a good good term for it you talked about in your book

00:11:53.860 they like they tickle rats like they're scientists like what they do is that's what they do is they

00:11:58.480 tickle rats and they get paid to do it yeah also yeah indeed um nowadays they're doing it um they're

00:12:05.240 being paid by big pharma to tickle rats which is i think uh a very interesting fact um the backstory

00:12:12.780 on that quickly is that that right now the pharmaceutical solutions for for depression are designed to

00:12:19.500 kind of try to remove depression but there aren't pharmaceutical solutions that increase happiness

00:12:26.380 and uh and the goal someday you know is to is to have happy pills that's brave new world stuff right

00:12:34.040 it's totally brave new world stuff and and to but to do that you need to be able to understand what

00:12:38.560 actually is happiness and so you so they they use rats to to try to they try to look at what makes

00:12:45.640 rats happy with the goal of trying to mimic that that physiological process and one of the things that

00:12:52.000 makes rats happy is tickling them and jostling them and kind of play fighting with them uh you know

00:12:59.420 sort of flipping them over and kind of rubbing their bellies and stuff like that which uh which

00:13:04.780 you or i can't do but the people who the rats know you know and trust can do and and when you do when

00:13:11.020 they do that when these scientists do that with rats these these rats make this sort of chirping sound

00:13:15.300 um it's an ultrasonic sound you can't hear it with the human ear but you can pick it up with a bat detector

00:13:20.400 and uh and this is a signal of positive emotion and and it goes even beyond this this is absolutely

00:13:28.960 fascinating is that once these scientists sort of start roughhousing playing play fighting tickling

00:13:35.920 these rats um the rats will will seek out this activity that is if the scientist moves his hand to the

00:13:44.440 other side of the cage the rats will chase the hand trying to to elicit more of this experience

00:13:52.280 and if you think about it from a rat's perspective this this experience is is a benign violation right

00:13:58.200 it's it's threatening yet safe um and what they've done with these studies is if they if they make these

00:14:05.400 sort of playful attacks not playful anymore they they get really aggressive the rats all of a sudden

00:14:12.420 make a different noise they make the same noise that they make when they fight each other

00:14:17.740 right you've just moved from it's the equivalent of i'm telling a joke and people are laughing and

00:14:24.780 then i go too far i get too risque and then all of a sudden people are angry you get the groans you get

00:14:30.780 you get yeah or or worse right people start throwing eggs at you or whatever it may be um or fire you

00:14:37.480 in the case of people going too far on twitter or you know yeah in the workplace and so on

00:14:42.220 and so same and the same is true for for non-human primates so so um they engage in play fighting

00:14:51.520 again it has this element of the situation is kind of scary but safe and so um uh so when it comes to

00:15:00.820 tickling tickling works in the same way with humans you can't tickle yourself no violation and if a creepy

00:15:08.120 guy in a trench coat tried to tickle you nothing benign right it's only when you trust the person

00:15:15.200 and it's done in a particular kind of way that that fits that taking that to the world of comedy

00:15:20.800 it's now it's just it's not physical threats anymore but it's absurdities it's uh logic violations it's

00:15:29.380 violations of cultural norms violations of social norms right when you think about it comedy plays on

00:15:35.280 things that are wrong you don't have comedians who get up and say oh what a beautiful day i saw the

00:15:40.760 best rainbow you know like they're what they're doing is they're talking about bad traffic and and

00:15:46.200 airline food and um you know dumb people and so on and so forth right so so there are plenty of

00:15:53.600 violations there it's just how do you find a way to not go too far right to to tell a joke about race

00:16:01.480 that that offends yeah well that's a question like how do you know like how do you figure that out

00:16:07.420 uh because on it's sort of weird on an abstract level like you're they're just words right so

00:16:11.720 there's really no like you know if someone says like a really offensive joke there's nothing

00:16:16.760 physically happening to you uh on a primal level i guess but yet we still there is a violation with

00:16:23.840 words um there's a right and wrong yeah so how how does that line drawn uh it has it changed over

00:16:30.120 time uh what what goes on there yeah so what you're highlighting is um is what makes my job as a

00:16:38.560 scientist very difficult and what makes the job of the the wannabe funny person very difficult

00:16:44.100 so so you could do what comics do which is uh use some combination of instinct

00:16:53.020 um and you know experience and uh and actually testing empirical testing to figure out what's

00:17:03.040 going to be funny and not so so if you ever go to a comedy club so when you see louis ck do an hour

00:17:08.940 special uh it just seems like the man is just um naturally the most funny person that you you know among

00:17:17.140 the most funny people in the world what you don't see is that for the previous 364 days

00:17:23.340 louis has been honing that material trying that this joke night in and night out and and tweaking

00:17:32.060 it here and there and seeing what gets bigger or lesser laughs with it and throwing out material that

00:17:37.560 doesn't work and keeping all the best stuff so he so he's a very funny guy to begin with he's got

00:17:43.660 great instincts but what he does is he writes hundreds of jokes and usually only one of a

00:17:50.020 hundred make it and he just has to figure out which are the ones that are going to make it and he does

00:17:55.880 it through a very rigorous even in many ways like unromantic testing process which is going to little

00:18:04.380 you know little clubs and and trying these kinds of things out what what i think is interesting is is a

00:18:11.960 theory may help cut that learning curve because the theory starts to explain a whole bunch of things

00:18:18.920 right explains why one person's laughing another person's bored and another person's offended

00:18:24.180 because they're each of those people see the world in a different way

00:18:29.660 they're threatened to varying to differing degrees um by you pointing out what might be wrong with the

00:18:37.640 world with yourself with them with politics and so on and so there are some i think hints at at ways

00:18:45.780 that you might be able to try to uh find the kinds of topics that are more universally going to be

00:18:52.840 accepted rather than um how do i say this rather than just saying like i'm just going to put this up

00:19:01.540 out there scattershot and see what ends up working yeah that gets people into trouble like as you said

00:19:06.480 like on twitter or whatever well yeah i mean nowadays this is a big problem is that comedy clubs used to

00:19:12.340 be a very like we're always kind of a safe place that is that people were going they knew that there

00:19:19.080 was some risk involved um and that a joke that would be told that bombed right you know a comic trying a

00:19:27.320 new joke about a risque topic uh and that joke doesn't go over well he or she just moves on to the next

00:19:34.460 joke no big deal people are momentarily upset and and a good comic can bring bring the audience back

00:19:40.180 but now with twitter with youtube uh is that some it just takes someone recording that joke or tweeting

00:19:48.140 about that joke or writing a blog about that joke that then it can become uh known to to not only um

00:19:56.480 uh the people in that city but but the people all over the world right and that joke wasn't

00:20:02.540 necessarily meant for a broad audience and it wasn't necessarily meant um it's being taken out

00:20:08.140 of context and and all these kinds of things and so it it makes this world a little bit more difficult

00:20:12.980 for the for the average stand-up are there are the comedians like doing anything to counteract that

00:20:18.100 like banning cell phones or you do get yeah you do get comedians who sort of yell at audience members

00:20:24.840 for for um you know for videotaping their bits uh that's certainly the case you know one thing that

00:20:31.240 has happened is really fascinating i don't know if you if you've heard this but but a number of high

00:20:35.580 profile comedians have stopped uh performing on college campuses yeah yeah the whole trigger warning

00:20:42.380 stuff for yeah because there's just like there's a there's a notion that like there's enough sensitivity

00:20:48.940 some people call it sensitivity some people call it you know knowledge of uh um of hegemony

00:20:58.120 that uh that a lot of things that would normally be funny for a a beer drinking friday night um you

00:21:08.760 know comedy club crowd doesn't doesn't work to a broad audience and and sometimes a very diverse

00:21:15.540 audience on a college campus so uh you you mentioned that uh you know okay we have this theory that can

00:21:21.940 possibly work as a shortcut to perhaps perhaps i have no data on that okay unfortunately but i i do

00:21:28.400 believe that to be the case okay but you mentioned like you know louis ck has like good instincts which

00:21:33.880 uh you know i hear that's like because is is there something with you know genetically or something that

00:21:39.260 louis ck that makes him more sensitive to figuring out those that benign theory when it crossed i mean

00:21:46.880 are some people basically the question is are some people born funny yeah so so i think that in the same

00:21:53.060 way that some people are born fast there are some people born funny there are some people born cheerful

00:21:59.020 there are some people who who are you know are born with a better sense of rhythm that we're not all

00:22:05.440 created equal um when it comes to a sense of humor especially ability to to um to produce

00:22:13.340 this humorous response than others but i also but i believe that that um

00:22:18.800 i believe that that's actually not a handicap that that you can become funnier in the same way that you

00:22:27.840 can become faster in the same way that you can become a better dancer in the same way that you can

00:22:32.680 um you can learn to play piano you know like that that almost that you become a better public speaker

00:22:38.920 that you can overcome your shyness um that there are a lot of things that we might have a

00:22:44.020 predisposition towards but with practice with coaching with feedback you can you you can improve

00:22:53.380 gotcha so um so for instance louis ck if you watch his old stuff i don't mean to pick on louis ck i mean

00:23:02.920 i actually think he's he's a really good comic he doesn't like the benign violation theory so i often

00:23:06.860 like to use him as an example of uh of how it fits so well if you if you look at old louis ck stuff you

00:23:14.200 can see the you can see flashes of his brilliance but uh you know he was 30 you know he was 30 32

00:23:22.480 years old and he was a middling comic yeah you know he was struggling to make it happen and what

00:23:27.640 happened was he he made he dedicated himself to to the craft in such a way where he started really

00:23:33.320 challenging himself and really take trying to take things to the next level and that's when his

00:23:38.240 when his career really took off if people were born with a sense of humor we would have these like

00:23:44.740 brilliant hilarious 22 year old stand-ups yeah and that just doesn't happen because you you need to work

00:23:51.540 hard to get good at it um louis has a louis has a pedophile joke that he i think he almost gave

00:24:01.320 up on it because he knew that he knew that it had the the bones to be funny but he couldn't make

00:24:07.200 he couldn't make it work and he until he sort of he just kept tweaking it tweaking it tweaking and then

00:24:14.120 he found the like the magic phrase we he gave he talked about this to howard stern um so the joke

00:24:20.180 the joke's about like what is the what's the most horrendous crime that someone could commit it's um

00:24:26.340 it's in his opinion it's not murder it's it's pedophilia it's to molest a child and it's so bad

00:24:32.900 that these these pedophiles are like at risk in prison and and so on and uh and as a consequence

00:24:39.140 sometimes they they kill their victims right so here you know here we are like this is this is we're in

00:24:45.140 big-time violation territory all of these topics get an audience aroused in a negative way you know but he

00:24:54.020 hasn't said anything controversial at this point and so what he does is he he follows this logical

00:25:00.480 chain and he's like well if we want to actually keep kids safer um keep them from being being murdered

00:25:08.840 we should we should start taking it a little easier on pedophiles oh boy that that that is his logic

00:25:15.540 here and and and your oh boy comment is is exactly what um how audiences would would generally respond

00:25:23.360 and what he ended up finding that he had to do was he had to create a caveat before he followed this

00:25:30.040 logical chain with this joke of course as you might know i'm not doing this joke justice for the

00:25:36.740 listeners they could probably easily google it and see what what how he executes this but he said that

00:25:42.320 he had to add a little caveat that just said i don't know what to do with this information

00:25:48.660 but and then he would follow the logical chain so he then went from someone who was prescribing

00:25:58.720 telling people how to behave to someone who was describing the quote-unquote objective facts of this

00:26:05.820 peculiar puzzle and then when he started doing that then that joke started getting laughs

00:26:11.600 interesting interesting that's so it's a fine line super is like razor sharp it's razor sharp and

00:26:17.920 it's razor sharp in part because that it's the jokes that have that that play on the biggest

00:26:23.080 violations on the things that are most wrong are are the ones that get the biggest laughs

00:26:28.460 typically now you did ask about like you know are you born funny or not i can tell you what the

00:26:34.180 predictor that i can tell you the best predictor of um of a sense of humor especially in terms of

00:26:40.500 production it's just simply intelligence is just being quick-witted and knowing about the world

00:26:48.620 but when it comes to uh humor consumption that is like tendency to laugh and not that that actually

00:26:58.640 is just sort of like cheerfulness just like having court sort of a sunny disposition like going through

00:27:03.520 life not feeling you know like the walls are closing in and like things are bad you know sort

00:27:10.780 of having a little bit of like uh being a little bit more cheerful is just the is sort of the the

00:27:16.780 best predictor on the opposite side and what's interesting is production and consumption are tend

00:27:21.960 to be uncorrelated if you laugh easily doesn't necessarily mean that you're funny if you're funny to

00:27:27.540 other people doesn't necessarily mean that you laugh easily gotcha wait so this idea that um

00:27:33.160 intelligence is what predicts uh humor or a sense of being able to produce humor is that why uh women

00:27:42.220 find men with a sense of humor attractive like it's a signal a sexual signal for intelligence

00:27:46.920 yeah so uh so one of the things that we did with the humor code was try to understand this question of

00:27:53.220 like are men so if you ask the average person you say who's going to be funnier a man or a woman

00:27:58.540 if you find if someone has a preference they'll usually say men yeah chris hitchens said that like

00:28:03.940 women can't be funny right yeah yeah well well chris was wrong um well yeah to your face hilarious

00:28:09.600 there's a lot of yeah well so so if you use the professional comedy ranks as your uh as your proof

00:28:17.820 then then then you come to the all these wild conclusions right like so does does anybody believe

00:28:23.900 that men make better doctors or better lawyers than women uh i don't think so but but the logic

00:28:31.400 would be well there's more male doctors than female doctors hence it must be true the world of comedy

00:28:37.520 is not very welcoming to women um there's not there's not as many mentors the clubs are run by men

00:28:44.240 there's still a lot of institutional sexism um that exists there and it's just not so fewer women just

00:28:50.660 try to do it from the very get-go but when it comes to just regular everyday people not the pros

00:28:56.960 um men and women tend to be more alike than different there is one finding that does stand out and it's

00:29:04.600 within a dating situation there's a tendency for men to try more and women to assess more

00:29:10.700 and the belief is the theory is that that um not only does a sense of humor suggest the two people

00:29:20.460 are compatible but it but your ability to be funny may suggest other valued characteristics

00:29:29.460 as you said intelligence so if you want to try to figure out is the guy smart or not if he's able

00:29:35.120 to make you laugh it's more likely that he is smart than not smart in that in that kind of way and so

00:29:41.760 so the evolutionary psychologists of the world hone in on that on that finding as saying that it's a

00:29:48.920 kind of sexual selection technique gotcha okay um so let's talk about uh your experience you went on

00:29:56.200 this whirlwind tour around the world trying to figure out what is what makes something funny

00:30:01.220 and then the the culmination of this is that you actually went up on stage and did a stand-up

00:30:05.880 routine um putting into practice all these the these theories you were able to come um come up with

00:30:12.200 based on your research how did that experience go of creating a stand-up routine based on science

00:30:18.720 uh so well so you have to understand that that it was my second time on stage okay uh because my

00:30:26.540 first time on stage was a total disaster uh i went i actually got up on stage in denver colorado and

00:30:33.560 did uh at the squire lounge and did an open mic night and totally bombed um i got one laugh and it

00:30:39.680 wasn't even an intentional laugh and and uh when i when i looked at the when i looked at the jokes i was

00:30:46.840 telling from a benign violation perspective they were too benign um they might have been funny to my

00:30:52.760 friends at a dinner party but they weren't funny to to the wannabe comedians and the dirtbag hipsters

00:30:59.500 you know at this uh this dive bar um and and uh my co-author joel warner was there in the audience and

00:31:07.100 and that actually really served as the foundation to to travel to all these places to go to the amazon

00:31:12.000 to go to tanzania to go to japan to go to scandinavia and so on and and joel only agreed to do this trip

00:31:19.500 if i agreed to get back on stage and to uh to prove we've learned something along the way

00:31:27.100 and uh and and we we went to the just for last festival the world's largest comedy festival and

00:31:32.720 and performed on at one of the shows and uh and it went better it went much much better um and it

00:31:40.180 went better in a large part because i what we did was we basically talked through all the different

00:31:44.800 things that that could help make something be funny so so we we just pointed out all the kind

00:31:50.540 of like weird things that we found on the on the during the travels right so when i got up on stage

00:31:56.800 i talked about these these travels and i talked about the peculiarities of the people and the places that

00:32:02.480 we that we saw and um and as a result like i i just played in a world of things being wrong

00:32:12.800 much more so than a world than a world that the in which things were sort of okay uh so for instance

00:32:19.720 i told a joke about how in in osaka japan which is is the it's the comedy capital of japan you can

00:32:26.320 walk up to a regular everyday person on the street and and like make your fingers into a gun and point

00:32:32.020 it at them and go bam and those uh those people will act like they've been shot it's like this unstated

00:32:38.820 joke that everybody in the city knows it's it's bizarre and so then the joke was like so i made

00:32:45.840 that observation and then i said um you know my plan is to use it to rob banks in the city next

00:32:52.340 you know and so uh you know these are not the world's funniest jokes but they're you know they're

00:32:59.080 not bad for a professor who studies what makes things funny rather than uh for a professor who's

00:33:04.480 who's truly a comedian at heart gotcha so you didn't get boot off the stage you got some laughs

00:33:09.620 i got some laughs it went all right yeah it actually really went all right now i mean if i had been

00:33:14.260 if i had really gone after this i that that event would have been i would have done 30

00:33:20.760 you know uh dive bars prior to that to get things uh really really honed in instead you know i tried to

00:33:30.160 make it a little bit more of an experiment and to use the kind of things you know i started the i

00:33:34.500 started the set with self-deprecation so i made a joke about myself um that's something that you

00:33:40.520 know when you when you i i you know i wear i sometimes wear a sweater vest i made i made a

00:33:46.020 joke about my sweater vest and uh when you when you make fun of yourself that almost by by neat by the

00:33:51.860 nature of it all is a benign violation you're pointing out something wrong with yourself but it's about

00:33:56.440 yourself and so that that very easily gets a laugh and sort of warms up the audience and then it gives

00:34:02.780 you it gives you more license to point out what's wrong with everyone else like the the the weird

00:34:08.700 behavior in osaka japan for instance yeah when does like self-deprecation go too far because i know

00:34:13.720 there's a lot of people who use that as their shtick but then you just like it's like you reach

00:34:18.000 the point where you're just like man yeah it's not funny anymore yeah you're just a loser yeah like

00:34:23.000 that at some point and i think that the point i think what it is is that so good comedians they

00:34:28.520 use it and then they move on right it's a it's a quick hit and then they move on um i think what

00:34:35.480 the risk of using self-deprecation is when um when it's it it's becomes constant right it's like

00:34:44.720 the person's always going back to it always going back to it and then it starts to make not not only you

00:34:51.740 think of the person in a negative way because you you know you part of the point of being funny is

00:34:56.900 that it's it's well liked yeah you know that that it it enhances people's assessment of you um if you

00:35:04.120 if you use self-deprecation too much people might actually start to believe the negative things that

00:35:09.300 you're pointing out and um and start to get really uncomfortable about it because now you're just

00:35:14.300 worried that you're you're just interacting with someone who has really low self-esteem yeah well

00:35:19.900 peter this has been a really fascinating conversation um but before we go i always like

00:35:23.220 to end these these podcasts with sort of like a quick practical tip takeaway i mean for the guys

00:35:28.960 who are listening to this right now um some of them probably are they they're probably natural

00:35:33.080 comedians but for those guys out there who aren't they want to be a little funnier what's one thing

00:35:37.980 they can do starting today to uh increase their humor a bit okay so i i think this is a this is a

00:35:45.780 straightforward prescription and that is that you have to try so you have to start to seek out

00:35:52.860 situations where you try to be funny and then you assess what works and what doesn't work

00:35:58.840 and when you fail be quick to apologize don't be defensive oh it was only a joke you know yeah you

00:36:06.600 know don't blame the victim just be like i was trying to be funny sorry about that store those

00:36:12.240 those failures away store the successes away and you can start to figure out in the same way that

00:36:18.100 if you want to become a good free throw shooter you got to practice free throws if you want to

00:36:23.780 become a funnier storyteller you got to practice telling funny stories awesome well peter mcgraw

00:36:29.440 thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you brett our guest today was peter mcgraw

00:36:33.740 he's the author of the book the humor code you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores

00:36:38.200 everywhere you can also find out more information about peter's work at peter mcgraw.org

00:36:43.000 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:36:50.700 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:36:54.800 this show you feel like you're getting something out of it i'd really appreciate it if you'd give

00:36:57.620 us a review on itunes or stitcher that would help us get some feedback on how we can improve the show

00:37:02.180 as well as get the word out about the podcast so until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:37:06.980 stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#137： How to Be Funnier With Peter McGraw

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