How to Write a Joke

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. 

If you listened to our show last year, you may have heard the voice of Elliott Kalan, who was my co-host for a series we did on the book The Power Broker. And as far as I’m concerned, Elliott was the perfect co-host. He’s smart, knowledgeable, easy to talk to–and he’s also very, very funny because, when he’s not moonlighting at 99PI, Elliott is a professional comedy writer. And over the years, he has written comedy in just about every medium there is. He worked for over a decade at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he eventually became the show’s head writer. He did stand-up. He writes comic books. And currently, he is the co-host of the original bad movie podcast, The Flophouse, and the showrunner for the forthcoming Netflix Ghostbusters animated series. 

We want to have Elliott back on the show because he has now written a book of his own, not so much about his career but about his craft. He says, “When you write jokes for a living, it takes a lot more than just having a good sense of humor. Instead, you have to have a system.” The book is called Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, and he’s here to talk about it with us. 

Elliott Kalan, it is so nice to have you back. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Thank you, Roman. It’s great to be back. Thank you so much for having me on to promote a book that I might make some money off of. After we did so much to put some money in Robert Caro’s pockets, I appreciate my getting a shot at it. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s right. So let’s get down to the basics–the very, very beginning. You know, what on earth made you think that you could write jokes for a living? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: The great thing about writing jokes for a living is that it’s less that you need someone to tell you you can do it and more that no one can tell you not to do it. And it helps that I grew up also watching television in the early 1990s, when there was still a lot of stand-up comedy on television in particular. 

ROMAN MARS: Like, you and I… I’m a little older than you. But there was this phase of cable television where, all of a sudden, you saw somebody standing in front of a brick wall, like, as part of television, you know?

ELLIOTT KALAN: And now we live in a world where it feels like there’s more comedy than not comedy. So, now it seems quaint. But it felt like there was so much comedy around that this was something you could do. And so I very foolishly somehow managed to achieve the lucky breaks to succeed at doing it, which baffles me and my family to this very day. 

ROMAN MARS: But what I’m curious about is, like, you got into this because the adults in your life told you you’re a naturally funny person. You’re a person that just makes people laugh. But that is not enough if you need to produce The Daily Show. You can’t just be naturally funny. It is a job. And you cultivated this thing called “joke farming” as a way to produce all the jokes that you have to do for something like The Daily Show. Could you talk about joke farming and how you sort of developed it as a discipline? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: I feel like the difference between being a funny person and being a comedy professional is the ability to be funny not just spontaneously, not just for whoever you’re talking to, but to be on demand in a professional manner when it needs to be done. You can’t wait for inspiration to strike. It has to be a reliable thing that you can go to when you need it and you can command it to a certain extent rather than letting it command you. And so, when I was working at The Daily Show, I worked with a lot of writers–and I was like this, too–where at first it was writing by gut. You’re writing the thing that you think is funny in the moment, and you spend a lot of time staring into space when something isn’t coming to you. But when you’re in an office and they’re like, “You know, it’s 9 o’clock, and your script is due at 10:30,” you can’t do that. And so I knew I had to write a lot of jokes really fast. And I should define– A joke is anything that is created in order to make someone laugh. That to me is a joke. 

ROMAN MARS: Got it. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And if I’m not feeling funny that day, it doesn’t matter. The show still needs it. And the show needs a lot of jokes. And it needs me to write them in, if I’m lucky, two hours–often less than that. And so I started talking to myself about what is the unconscious process that my mind goes through when I am coming up with a joke off the top of my head. I need to verbalize it. I need to be able to articulate to myself so that I can then replicate it as a real deliberate process that I force myself to go through. 

ROMAN MARS: And did you go through this exercise of figuring this out–verbalizing it–at the time? Or is this something that you did writing the book? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Oh no, this is something I did at the time. I said to myself, “I need to free myself from being chained to inspiration,” basically, which is something that I can’t control. And so I wanted to have a process where you can take any subject and you can go through the steps of that process and then come out with a joke on the other end. And one of the things that I want to get across in the book is that you don’t have to use my process, but it’s good to have a process. And your process should mimic your way of thinking. It should fit your needs, your voice, and how you most comfortably write. But whatever that process is, it should be something that you know the steps of so that, at those times when you don’t have inspiration but you need to produce a joke, you can do it. 

ROMAN MARS: Okay, so let’s talk about some of that processing and how The Daily Show process morphed into your own process that you described. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: I mean, for copyright and patent purposes, this is my own original process, you know? I’m sure there’s influences, but let’s not give them too much credit. No, the thing I should say also about the work in The Daily Show–I don’t want it to sound like I’m a genius who came up with all this stuff. You know, this was very much me being taught and led by the people I was very lucky to be working with. 

ROMAN MARS: So your day at The Daily Show starts. There’s lots of news. Some of it is hard news to figure out how to make comedy about. Some of it’s maybe super easy to make comedy about it. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Some of it’s very easy. There was one time there was a stadium that got built somewhere and from above it looked like a vagina. And it was a very easy one to write jokes about. Yeah. 

ROMAN MARS: And so could you take us through the joke farming process with a joke from The Daily Show? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Sure. So the first thing I would have to do is consider who is telling this joke. Who is the joke teller? Whose voice is it? Which in the case of The Daily Show when I was there would have been Jon Stewart. He’s the host of the show. He’s going to say all the jokes. Then I would try to say to myself, “What is the point of this joke?” And by “point,” I mean, “What is the message I’m trying to get across in this joke? What’s the meaning of it?” Not necessarily the funny thing about it– In fact, often it’s the least funny part of the joke. And so an example that I was always very proud of myself–too much, some people would say–is a joke that I wrote for The Daily Show in 2015. There had been a terrorist attack in France. And the United States sent the then Secretary of State John Kerry on a goodwill visit. 

NEWS ANCHOR: Secretary of State John Kerry is on a charm offensive this morning in Paris… 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And the thing about John Kerry is, at the time, he was famous for being very boring and stiff–just a slow talking statue of a man. He’s more statue than man. 

JOHN KERRY: I would like to say directly to the people of Paris and of all of France that each and every American stands with you today, both to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause which the extremists fear so much… 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And the first point that jumps into your head is: “This is the guy you’re sending on a goodwill visit–this guy who is very boring and very unpersonable?” But that seemed very obvious. There had to be something less obvious than John Kerry is boring, which, at this point of The Daily Show, I think we had told roughly 700,000 million jokes about John Kerry being boring. So, in looking through the material that we had been given by the researchers and segment producers for this piece, I found this Wolf Blitzer clip where he’s reminding us that John Kerry is this enormous Francophile. He loves France. 

WOLF BLITZER: John Kerry speaks French, loves France, studied in France…

ELLIOTT KALAN: So the point I decided to go with for this joke is the world’s stiffest, least kind of cool man loves everything about the world’s sexiest country. 

ROMAN MARS: Right. Right. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: But that’s a point. If I say it like that, it’s not funny. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s not a joke. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: No, it is not. It’s just me stating a true fact. And so I have to develop a premise to go around it. And a premise is essentially what is the little story that you’re gonna tell this joke through that gets close to the point but not so close that you’re just saying it so that the audience can make a little leap in their minds and they can get it. 

ROMAN MARS: You’re setting up a scenario so they will arrive to the point without you telling them the point of the joke. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Exactly. And one way I like to think about premises is kind of like what if scenarios. And so I said to myself, “What if John Kerry loves French things so much that as long as the word French is in there, he loves it?” French fries, French kissing, French horns… And it bakes in the second point that is unrelated to the story that I was covering but is kind of a funny point still to me, which is there’s all this stuff that’s not French but we call it French, which is really fun. 

So I’ve got the premise. John Kerry loves everything with “French” in the name. Now I need structure. And structure is literally the mechanical construction of the joke–how you release each piece of information one step after another in order. So you walk the audience right up to the very edge of the point where they can then make the leap on their own and they land in the joke. So, in writing this John Kerry joke, I started riffing on Wolf Blitzer’s cadence. 

WOLF BLITZER: John Kerry speaks French, loves France, studied in France… 

ELLIOTT KALAN: I wanted to continue that cadence in a kind of a list, but where John makes it a question and answer thing. Instead of saying, “He loves French fries. He loves French Bulldogs…” Instead, it’s: “Favorite type of fries?”

JON STEWART: Favorite type of Fries? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And the audience fills in “French,” and he says–

JON STEWART: French! Favorite type of bulldog? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Audience Fills in “French.”

JON STEWART: French!

ELLIOTT KALAN: And when you’re structuring a joke, you want to do what’s called heightening. You want to escalate it from the kind of least funny one–the least exaggerated one–to the most exaggerated one. And then you move on to more dramatic examples or sillier examples. 

JON STEWART: Favorite kind of maid? French! 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And so I’ve now established the pattern. “French! French! French!” It could go on forever. There’s so many French things. But then at the end, I want to subvert that pattern. I want to disrupt it. 

ROMAN MARS: Right. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And so, I was like, “What if there’s something where the answer could be French, but then it isn’t French?”

ROMAN MARS: Got it. Okay. Okay. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And so, there’s a kind of mustard called French’s Mustard. And John Kerry, at the time, famously, was married to one of the heirs of the Heinz Condiment fortune. So I could say–

JON STEWART: Favorite mustard! 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And the audience expects the answer to be “French.” And then Jon’s gonna say–

JON STEWART: Heinz. Come on, he’s not going to jeopardize his marriage over mustard! 

[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]

ELLIOTT KALAN: And so you’ve taken a joke specifically about John Kerry. You’ve made it about how there are a lot of things called French. And then you’ve taken it back around to being a joke that only works for John Kerry because only John Kerry is married to a Heinz. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Okay, yes. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And I think the process of working on that took probably less time than it took to describe it because I was like, “Here are the steps that I’m going through.” And I could design this joke so much faster than I would have otherwise if I was just sitting here trying to think of something to come out of the blue. 

ROMAN MARS: But outside of The Daily Show, I know your book has a lot of examples from the world of comedy at large. What are other good examples of somebody using structure to subvert expectation? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: So, most people are familiar, I think, with the kind of structure that you would call set-up punchline. And one of the examples I use in the book is a joke by Rita Rudner, who I think is one of the greatest stand-ups of all time. 

ROMAN MARS: Totally. I grew up with her. She was one of the standouts of the ’80s.

ELLIOTT KALAN: She’s amazing, yeah. And one of her first jokes, she says– 

RITA RUDNER: It’s gonna be a long time for me for children. I’m very single. I was going with someone for a few years, but we broke up. It was one of those things. He wanted to get married and… I didn’t want him to… 

ELLIOTT KALAN: But that structure of… Here’s a piece of information, and now I’m going to subvert it slightly with the punchline. And I’m not going to say, “I broke up with my boyfriend. He wanted to get married, but he married his other girlfriend.” Like, that’s not a funny way to say it. But you’re surprising the audience by providing an answer that is ideally logical, but not in the way that the audience originally thought it was going to be.

ROMAN MARS: I think it’s an amazing joke because the sentence that subverts expectations–“I didn’t want him to”–all the meaning of the joke relies on the word “him.”

ELLIOTT KALAN: Yes. And I would say it is a brilliant joke to me because so much of it is packed in that word. And the fewer number of words that you can use to deliver a joke–the fewer of details you can provide–usually the better. You don’t want to confuse the audience. And with the clearest, most precise word that you can use– And so there might be that moment where the audience takes a short second to understand it and to complete it for themselves. But that’s the moment where that joke lives–that beautiful moment there. 

ROMAN MARS: In the book, you say that in your joke writing process, there’s other elements to a joke that you like to consider beyond the point, the premise, and the structure. So, after you’ve figured out that core logic, what comes next? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: So, then we get into what I would call the “fiddling” with the joke, where you work on the tone of it–kind of like what emotional implications you’re trying to get into it. Are you speaking with sincerity or insincerity? What level of irony are you bringing to this? What level or aggression towards the audience or towards the subject of the joke are you bringing? And it’s kind of like when you’re speaking at a wedding where you’re trying to balance the sincerity of your feelings towards the couple that are getting married with the insincerity of the kind of ribbing that you’re doing of them. 

ROMAN MARS: So, give me an example of tone and tone management when you’re doing a joke. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: So, Don Rickles, for instance– For the younger members of the listenership, if they don’t know, Don Rickles was the master of insult comedy that was just so aggressively over-the-top hostile that you could not take it seriously as real actual hostility. 

DAVID LETTERMAN: Am I right? His wife and your wife have the same name? Frank’s wife and your wife? 

DON RICKLES: What, are you a detective? 

DAVID LETTERMAN: [LAUGHING] Yeah, I’m a detective. That’s right. 

DON RICKLES: I mean, you come up with these remarks. “They have the same name, don’t they?”

DAVID LETTERMAN: Now, uh, well, uh, Denzel was–

DON RICKLES: [MOCK GRUMBLES AND STAMMERS] There’s medication for that, Dave! 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Whereas, sometimes the more deadpan you are, like with a comedian like Steven Wright, who I think is a master– But his stuff is so deadpan that you’re like, “Well, obviously he didn’t really do these things.” 

STEVEN WRIGHT: Called the wrong number today. I said, “Hello, is Joey there?” And the woman answered–she said, “Yes, he is.” I said, “Can I speak to him please?” She said, “No, he can’t talk right now. He’s only two months old.” I said, “Alright, I’ll wait…”

ROMAN MARS: I mean, who is telling the joke is… It’s maybe not as important as the joke itself, but it’s up there. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Who is telling the joke is the first piece of information that the audience gets about the joke. Who is this person? What do I assume their perspective that they’re bringing to it is? And in the book I talk about kind of, like, stand-up persona and how it can help become the context for the tone of a joke. And an example of this that I use in the books is Charlie Hill, who is another great comic, who was a member of the Oneida Nation. 

CHARLIE HILL: I know a lot of you white people never seen an Indian do stand-up comedy before, you know? Like, for so long you probably thought that Indians never had a sense of humor, you know? We never thought you were too funny either… 

ELLIOTT KALAN: It was on a talk show in the ’70s, and they asked him if he ever played cowboy and Indians, which, I hope, was a setup that he provided for them and not an actual question that they were asking him. And he said, “No, we never played cowboys and Indians but we did play Nazis and Jews. The rules are the same.” And that’s a harsh– I love that joke. That’s a hard joke. But coming from someone who is bringing the perspective of a Native American and an indigenous person, it means a certain thing. It is not a joke that means to make a joke about the ideas of Nazis killing Jews. It is instead about reframing this childhood game that makes light of genocide in the light of another genocide that the audience recognizes, but in a funny way–as a funny joke. And the fact that it’s coming from Charlie Hill means we understand what he’s getting at. 

ROMAN MARS: And this leads us to the audience, which is the completion of the joke, which is essentially, like, the last part and the most important part. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: It’s the most important. Unfortunately, it’s the most important part. And you can’t tell a joke on your own. The audience provides the most important part of the joke, which is the person laughing at the joke. And there’s something very depressingly humbling about the idea that, like, you don’t get to decide, ultimately, if your work is funny or not. The audience gets to decide. And if they’re not laughing, then you failed them. But also, the audience wants to laugh. And such a big thing for me when I was performing stand-up was remembering the audience is not there to get mad at me. They’re not challenging me. They might be a little bit. But they want the joke writer or the performer to succeed because it’s more fun for them. And you want to succeed by maybe challenging what they’re gonna laugh at a little bit, but not challenging it so much that you’re deliberately bombing. There’s some comedians who love to bomb. It’s very fun if you’re a comedian to watch another comedian bomb, but only because then you become the audience. The audience becomes the punchline to the joke, and you become the audience of watching the joke of an audience not getting a joke. And that’s why, when I was young, I kind of was very frustrated with Andy Kaufman’s comedy because it was like Andy Kaufman is both the joke teller and the audience. Like, it is all about his reaction or his enjoyment of the audience’s confusion. 

ANDY KAUFMAN: I don’t understand one thing. No seriously. Why everyone is going, “Boo,” on, like, the joke when I tell some of the jokes– And then when I don’t want you to laugh, you’re laughing. Like right now. I don’t understand…

ELLIOTT KALAN: Now I kind of like it. Now I think it’s kind of funny because it makes the audience such an integral part of that material. 

ANDY KAUFMAN: I had other stuff I was going to do for you, but I don’t think I should, so I just want to say thank you. And, you know, I’m just trying to do…. You don’t have to say that, really. Okay? I’m trying to just do my best to have some fun. And if you don’t like it, that’s it. Okay, thank you very much and good night… 

ROMAN MARS: I mean, one of the reasons why Andy Kaufman ends up working is you could see the sort of anti-comedy stuff where it seems like it’s just for his own benefit. But in a totally other act, you could see just how funny he is and bringing the people in when he wants to. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: The first audience for all of Andy Kaufman’s bits–they are the first wave at D-Day that get mowed down and never have a chance so that the next wave of audience members can understand it and laugh at the joke. But even then it’s a matter of delivering information to the audience. And the audience will give you thoughts that are sometimes wrong. If the audience says, “I didn’t like that you talked about this thing,” then that’s not a good note. But if the note is “I didn’t think that was funny the way you talked about it,” then that’s a good note because then you’re not communicating the absurdity you’re seeing properly to the audience. 

ROMAN MARS: Could you give an example of audience feedback that was valuable to you? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Some of the most audience feedback I got was when I was working on the Netflix seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And Mystery Science theater was the show I wanted to work on since I was a teenager. I felt really, like, so grateful that I got to work in it. And when we were working on that first season, I was like, “This is my philosophy–max jokes.” That’s what I used to call it in the writers’ room. Maximum jokes. “Let’s see how many jokes we could fit in there.” And we put in just wall-to-wall jokes. 

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000: It’s like how The Wire taught me how crime works. Now I’m good at crime. / I can’t identify you by your chest hair. / Oh! I was the one shooting you! Oh! Ah, now the gun’s on the other foot. / You just got Narco’d… 

ELLIOTT KALAN: And the feedback we got from the audience was that there’s too many jokes in this show. They’re like, “I don’t have time to process each joke before the next one comes. I don’t have time to really sit in that joke and laugh at it, and then I’m missing the next one.” And that was a good note because there’s something important about the time after a joke and the time before the next joke and the timing of that. And so for the second season of that show, if it felt like there were too many jokes too close together, I’d weed them out. And Joel Hodgson–the creator of that show–he started calling me “the joke killer.” I’d be like, “We should take these out.” And he’s like, “Ah, the joke killer is at it again.” But it was a matter of kind of thinning the herd so that the strongest jokes have their chance to get their best moment in the sun. 

ROMAN MARS: When we come back, we talk to Elliott about what his fellow comedy writers think of his system and how comedians can use comedy for good and evil. Stay with us. 

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: We are back with my sometimes co-host and always brilliant comedy writer, Elliott Kalan. So, Elliott, earlier, you kind of laid out the elements of what you call joke farming. And there’s a few of them. There’s the identity, the idea, the premise, the structure, the tone, the voice, the wording, the audience… Like, this is a process. It is developed. So I’m curious–were your fellow writers on The Daily Show aware that you were going through all these steps in your head? Like, were they aware that you were joke farming? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Um… No, not really. I mean, by that time, I was the head writer on the show. And some of the writers I would talk to about, like, “Let’s try to think systematically about the way we’re doing things so you can increase your hit rate.” But often they were not that interested in it, I mean, more because, when you’re a comedy writer, I think it is hard sometimes to think of what you’re doing as engineering in that way–as something that you can do that way. And you kind of don’t want to think about it that way sometimes because I think there’s a fear that if you question where the inspiration is coming from–if you try to control it–you might lose it. It might go away. You know, it’s a miracle that you don’t control. And I feel like every comedy person has this fear in the back of their head that one day they’ll wake up and they won’t know how to be funny anymore. And there’s an old saying from, I think, E.B. White about explaining how a joke works. It’s like dissecting a frog. It’s not good for the frog. I don’t agree with that. But I think a lot of people have internalized that idea. 

But also, at the same time, there are a number of comedy professionals I met who are not so interested in figuring out their own process, but they are very fascinated by how other people do their process. And the thing you always hear about Jerry Seinfeld or you used to hear about Jerry Seinfeld was he actually sits down and writes. Like, he sits down every day for a couple hours and just writes and works. He doesn’t carry around a notebook and just wait for something to hit him and then work it out on stage. Like, he writes it out. And so I think there is an interest on the part of professionals in other people’s way of doing that craft. 

ROMAN MARS: It’s funny to me that when people reveal that Jerry Seinfeld actually writes–that Joan Rivers has a card catalog full of 10,000 jokes or something like that–that it’s surprising to people because they just think of them as funny people, when the best at this definitely know their craft. And even if they don’t write it out in steps like you do in terms of joke farming, they’re basically joke farming. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Yes or, at the very least, joke foraging, where they are keeping their eye open to the world around them for opportunities for things to tell jokes about. I think there’s an attempt to work very hard at something and then make it look as if no work has been put into it. And that’s the real magic of it–the illusion that someone is up on stage and they’re just riffing, they are just speaking their truth or whatever, and it’s just coming out so funny. But I think that illusion is part of the craft of it. And I know that, when I read prose or when I watch stand-ups, even I as an audience member am like, “Oh God, I wish I was as good as them because they’re just talking and it’s funny. Like, they must’ve put no work into that at all.” And then I have to remember, like, no, they obviously put work into it. 

ROMAN MARS: Well, I want to talk about one thing you mentioned in the book, which is this ability to use these techniques of joke telling for evil purposes. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: I wouldn’t advise it. I don’t recommend people use it for evil. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah, but how are they used for evil purposes? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Well, I mean, joke writing–joke telling–it’s just a tool. And so I think there are bad people who use comedy to get bad effects. And I think the misunderstanding is if it’s funny, it must be right–it must be getting at something that I believe–which I think is not true. And comedians, for a long time, liked to puff themselves up about, like, “Well, really comedy is about speaking truth to power. And you always punch up. You never punch down. It’s not funny to punch down.” And it’s like, “Have you met a bully?” Like, a lot of people like to punch down, and they find it very funny. And you can’t say, “Well, they don’t count because they’re not funny,” because somebody finds them funny, even if you don’t. Like, why did Donald Trump become such a successful candidate? Partly because a lot of people found him very funny. And he had one joke during his campaign that I thought was very funny–that was just straightforward stand-up comedy–where he was in, I think, Cleveland. And he’s like, “I’m in Cleveland. I need your vote. I wouldn’t be in Cleveland if I didn’t need your vote. You think I’d be in Cleveland if I didn’t eat your vote? No, I wouldn’t.” And that’s, like, standard stand-up just roasting the town they’re in. And I was like, “You know, that’s a funny joke. But it’s being used for evil.” But like any communication tool or any work of art, it can embody terrible things and still be an example of craft. 

ROMAN MARS: This reminds me of something–just the power of the joke as a structure and how it elicits a response–this reminds of one time I was doing this…

ELLIOTT KALAN: Is this a real story or a joke? 

ROMAN MARS: This is a real story. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: “One time I was on the way to an interview and the craziest thing happened…”

ROMAN MARS: No, but I was doing an interview. And it was about these seed banks that store all of the seeds that are in the world so that, if something catastrophic happens, they have all the seeds in this safe place so that it can replace the plant life that’s been destroyed. And it was talking about the one in Svalbard, which is this remote, like, arctic island. And it was so cherished and protected. And it’s there underground in a vault. And then I asked, “Well, there’s another one. Where was the other one?” And the person said, “Oh, Aleppo.” And I laughed because Aleppo was undergoing this intense civil war, where a bunch of people were dying. And it’s just the structure of a joke of just, like, we’re going to describe the safest place that the seeds are safe. And then the other one is in Aleppo. And I laugh. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: They’re like, “We have it. It’s in the most extreme maximum security.” “Where’s the other one?” “Oh, a toddler keeps it in his pants.”

ROMAN MARS: That’s exactly it. Okay, so it was a genuine reaction. We put it out on the air. And a Syrian wrote me and said, “It really broke my heart that you laughed at that.” And part of me was like, “I get it. I get what you’re saying.” But I couldn’t help it. It was a joke setup almost. And sort of the nature of the structure of a joke is so powerful that I was definitely not making fun of Aleppo or thinking about their suffering. I was definitely thinking of it as, like, putting it in the pants of a toddler, you know?

ELLIOTT KALAN: You were thinking of it in terms of the pattern that had been set up. They had set up the pattern of these seeds are the most precious thing and we have to keep them in the safest possible place. And then the subversion of that pattern, which is Aleppo– And you’re right that you were laughing at the structure of that joke. You were not laughing at the tragedy of what was going on at the time. But at the same time, you can’t fault the emotional reaction of that audience member. If they have an individual reaction to the content of the joke, what the joke is about, the how it’s said, you can’t fault that because the audience is ultimately the decider for themselves of what is funny or not. They have a sense of humor. It’s not a science of humor. It’s a sense, you know? And it’s individual for everyone. 

ROMAN MARS: Elliott, I gotta say, I love this book. I loved learning how your mind works a little bit more. And I’m curious, what do you want people to get out of it who are not going to be paid joke writers ever in their life? 

ELLIOTT KALAN: My hope is that first you enjoy it–first that you laugh. It’s a funny book. And first that laugh at and enjoy it, you know–

ROMAN MARS: That’s a funny thing because the thing that people should recognize is, when you’re dissecting jokes and telling people how to write jokes, as examples, you use jokes. And so, therefore, it has tons of jokes in it. And you have a wide-reaching survey of comedy of the last few decades. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: I was trying very hard to get a wide variety of people, comedy types, and comedy mediums. But even then it’s still just scratching the surface because there’s so much. Comedy is so enormous. The comedy you see on TikTok is very much the same as comedy you see in a stand-up, comedy you’ll see in a funny movie, comedy you’ll read in– I use an example from the book Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, which is a hilarious book, but it’s hundreds of years old. It’s all on the same continuum; they’re all part of the same craft and the same art. And my hope is that you will then see a comedian or a TV show and, while you’re watching it, you can buy into that illusion of “This is just happening in front of me. And it’s really funny. These people are geniuses.” But afterwards you can appreciate a lot of work went into that. A lot of craft went into it. And now I have a greater appreciation for the people who did it because ultimately we’re people. We live in a world of people. Everything’s done for people. All the jokes are for people. Animals don’t laugh at jokes particularly–maybe smarter gorillas. But anything you’re saying is in order to connect from one person to another person. And so to be able to, for a moment, share a thought or a feeling with another human being and to have that moment of risk where you’re not sure if they’re gonna connect with you and then they don’t and you can be like, “Oh, well that didn’t work,” or they do and you go, “This is amazing,” that’s the whole reason to create art. And it’s certainly the reason that I create comedy. 

ROMAN MARS: Elliott, this has been fantastic. Thanks for coming on the show. 

ELLIOTT KALAN: Thank you, Roman. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. 

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Joe Rosenberg, and edited by Delaney Hall. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real.

Elliott Kalan’s book is called Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense. It is fantastic. It is laugh out loud funny. You will learn a lot from it, even if you’re not a comedy writer. We’ll have a link on our website, and you can find it wherever books are sold. 

Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jayson De Leon, Emmett FitzGerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lasha Madan, Kelly Prime, Jeyca Medina-Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradley, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.

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