This is a HeadGum Podcast. I don't know what you think I don't know what you say

and that's all right

yeah that's okay

I don't know anything.

Hello, welcome to factually, I'm Adam Conover,

and look, earlier this year year before the big everything I had a philosopher

on the show named Scott Soames and to introduce him I talked about the relationship

between comedy and philosophy about how they're similar and about how my pursuit of philosophy led me to a life in comedy.

Now our guest today is a super smart, incredibly fascinating philosopher and scholar named

Quill Kukla and they have specifically

written about philosophy and comedy and their relationship and where they overlap.

So for my opening monologue today I want to return to that topic the connections between comedy and

philosophy. See here's one important thing that's true of both of them to do them

you need other people you need an audience in other words a joke isn't funny if no one laughs at it.

And a philosopher with no one to listen to them philosophize,

well that's just a hermit muttering at the clouds. And of course an audience is not something

that's guaranteed in either discipline.

When you start out as a comic, chances are you're going to be at open mics where your audience is just going to be

other aspiring, bitter stand-up staring at you refusing to laugh and similarly in philosophy your

audience through grad school and hey maybe if you do wind up being a professor is

mainly other philosophers who are probably I'm gonna to guess based on the state of the

academic job market even more bitter than your average comedian and that can be a

...