Groucho And Me
Laughter is social. Provine study description and commentary is from a Guardian piece he wrote: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/02/why-we-laugh-psychology-provine.
Dan Heath • The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
John Cleese: “Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner, discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our children, or our marriages, or the meaning of life, and we could be laughing, and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less serious. Solemnity, on the other hand, I hones... See more
visakan veerasamy • Article
the ratings increased with the number of mindstates (jokes that involve several protagonists are funnier than those that involve only one) up to five mindstates, but after that they quickly became less and less funny. It seems that when there are more than five minds involved people just cannot get their head around (yet another metaphor) the point
... See moreRobin Dunbar • Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships
“I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.”
― Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life