This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

If you're a fan of New Yorker cartoons, you've probably seen and enjoyed the work of my guest, David Cypress.

Since 1998, he's been a staff cartoonist at the magazine, where he's published about 700 cartoons.

In 2012, during the presidential campaign, he became the magazine's first daily cartoonist on the New Yorker website.

He did daily cartoons again in 2014 and twice in 2016 during the presidential primary and the campaign.

His new memoir, What's So Funny, is about his life and about cartooning.

The book is illustrated with his cartoons.

David Cypress, welcome to Fresh Air. I love your cartoons. Thank you for being here.

Let's start with your most published and tweeted cartoon. Would you describe it?

Yeah, it's two people walking down the street, a woman and a man, and the woman is turning to the...

She's sort of looking up at the sky and saying, my desire to be well informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.

That has been true for so many years right now. When did you write it?

I wrote that sometime during the 90s, it's not a New Yorker cartoon.

I never can remember where it first started, but I think it was during the whole Bosnia problem.

It was so upsetting getting up every day and reading the paper.

Something we're familiar with right now. Every time the world goes down the toilet,

that cartoon begins to show up all over the internet.

I think what's interesting about that cartoon is it's not actually funny. It's not a joke.

It's something I've learned to do about these difficult things that happen in the world.

How to make a cartoon about them? I try not to hit them over the head or go straight for them.

I try to think about what I'm feeling, about what's going on, and make a cartoon like that one,

which is it was exactly how I feel right now about everything going on.

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