Comedy Critic Jesse David Fox on the Cultural Role of Comedy

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jesse David Fox works as Vulture’s comedy critic and hosts the podcast “Good One,” where each episode features comedians like John Mulaney and Sasheer Zamata spending up to two hours breaking down one joke and why it makes us laugh. But his new book, “Comedy Book,” questions whether comedy has to be funny at all. It takes us from the premiere of “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons” in 1989, to the new relationship between politics, journalism and humor engendered by John Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” to the — sometimes politically contentious, sometimes camp — comedy landscape of today. We’ll talk with Fox about how we use comedy to make sense of the news, social media fads, identity and both personal and collective grief. Guests: Jesse David Fox, senior editor and comedy critic, Vulture; creator and host, "Good One: A Podcast about Jokes"; author, "Comedy Book" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:51.4	The Very. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim.
0:54.4	Coming up on forum, comedy is a whole thing now, says Jesse David Fox, comedy critic for Vulture.
0:59.8	It's in mesh in how millennials and Gen Z communicate with funny videos on Facebook or lip-sinking of favorite sitcom scene on TikTok.
1:06.8	It's how we process politics and presidential campaigns or deal with frustration and even personal tragedy.
1:12.3	And yet, Fox writes, people, including comedians, push back on attempts to take it seriously.
1:17.2	We'll talk with Fox about why he thinks this needs to change and about his own analysis of comedy from the 90s to the early 2020s.
1:23.6	In his new book called Comedy Book, How Comedy Conquered Culture and the Magic that Makes It Work.
1:29.8	Join us.
1:35.4	Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.
1:42.1	Comedy has ascended as a major cultural force. Jesse David Fox,
	...

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