From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

It's The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear this show at KCRW.com.

I think the best thing to say about my guest, writer, comedian, performer, and author, Carol

Leifer, is that I think she's brought common sense and clarity and simplicity to comedy.

I mean, one of my favorite lines of all the time is an old line of hers.

I don't have any kids, well, that I know of.

That's right.

She's since going on to make a spectacular career as a stand-up and running for shows such as Seinfeld.

And of course, even more recently, the third season of Hacks.

She's an Emmy winner, and she's here to talk about her new book, and I love the title,

How to Write a Funny Speech, Bar Mitzvah, Graduation, and every other event you didn't want to go to in the first place.

What's so great about the book is that it's just so full of common sense.

I mean, one of my favorite things is the location, location, location section is one size does not fit all.

And as you mentioned in the book, so many books have been about kind of this sort of boilerplate way of making speeches.

Yes.

And you guys get into the fact that there's more than one speech and more than one plays.

Exactly.

I mean, my co-writer and I, Rick Mitchell, who wrote for Ellen's Talk Show for six seasons,

we just wanted to put together something. You know, we found speech books to be like Dale Carnegie

and very kind of business, you know, hey, when you get up there approach your crowd distinguished

...