How To Make Humor Your Superpower

How To! with Mike Pesca

Peach Fish Projects

Education, How To

4.3 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did you know that we, as a society, have fallen off a comedy cliff? No joke. Studies have shown that we largely stop laughing when we enter our mid-twenties, which is a shame because delighting in humor has a ton of health benefits. Plus, being perceived as funny can actually make people think you're more intelligent, more competent, and even better looking! So on this episode of How To!, the first in a two-part series, we bring on Naomi Bagdonas, co-author of Humor, Seriously!, and Michael Terry, an amateur comedian who is working in the funniest of places: high finance. Combined, they have decades of experience harnessing the power humor and applying it to the workplace.

If you liked this episode, check out "How To Confront a Crazy Neighbor" with Tig Notaro.

If you want to discover your own humor style, take the test on Naomi and Jennifer's website.

Do you have a question with no easy answers? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Michael. Hi. Yes. We did it guys. We did it. We did it. Okay, now, should I be
0:08.3	intimidated by Michael's headset microphone or should I feel like I'm better
0:12.6	than him? I would go with the ladder. I look much more like the Verizon help desk
0:17.7	than you do. So I think you're definitely winning. Welcome to How To. I'm Amanda
0:26.4	Ripley. Today we're going to talk about the underappreciated power of humor in
0:31.6	good times and bad, which means we're going to laugh a lot. Just know that. But
0:38.5	first I want to take you back to 1999. It's about a decade after the official
0:44.5	end of the Cold War with Russia. Relations are beginning to thaw but old habits
0:50.0	die hard and Moscow has crossed a major line. They were caught bugging the US
0:56.6	State Department. And Secretary of State Madeline Albright had every reason to be
1:02.3	furious. So Secretary Albright was trying to figure out how do I handle this
1:07.5	next meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister. This is Naomi Bagdonis, a lecturer
1:13.2	at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. So there were a few ways Secretary
1:18.0	Albright could navigate this interaction, right? She could go nuclear,
1:21.9	metaphorically speaking, and blow up diplomatic relations. Or she could simply
1:27.3	give Russia's foreign minister the cold shoulder. But instead she chose a third
1:32.2	option. In that first meeting after the bugging, Secretary Albright walked into
1:38.1	the room wearing an enormous bug pin. Like grand old pin of this huge bug on
1:46.3	her on her like a brooch. A bug brooch. Yeah. And she walked in and she looked at him.
1:56.3	She looked down at the broach. She looked back at him. He looked at her. He looked at
1:59.7	the broach. And in her words, she said he couldn't help but smile. And it shifted
2:04.7	the dynamic in the room. And she said it was it was that opening that allowed
	...

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