Humor Me

How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy

By: Chris Duffy

Narrated by: Chris Duffy

From a comedian and host of hit TED podcast, How to Be a Better Human, a hilarious and enlightening guide to laughing your way into a fuller life

“Warning: this book may cause repeated smiling. It’s a delightful read about how we can bring more levity into our lives.”
—Adam Grant, author of Hidden Potential and Think Again

In his days as an exhausted fifth grade teacher, Chris Duffy taught the funniest person he’s ever met: eleven-year-old Gary. Gary was the school newspaper’s official food critic, blasting cafeteria pizza for looking like cardboard and opining that the baked beans weren’t “beany” enough. These days, Duffy is a professional comedy writer and the host of a podcast with millions of listeners, but he’s never forgotten the transformative joy of laughing with Gary during a bleak Boston winter. In Humor Me, he shares a road map for how to cultivate and strengthen a sense of humor in a challenging world.

Duffy embarks on a journey that takes him from comedy clubs to emergency rooms to a helicopter full of Navy SEALs and back to his own keyboard to reveal how—and why—a good laugh can bring us closer to the good life. Drawing on personal stories, insights from the social sciences, and the wisdom of comedians, Duffy offers practical strategies, including:

• How to hone the art of noticing, finding humor in the most unlikely places
• Why you should take social risks (to build connection through humor!)
• How to apply the comedy secret that laughs come in threes.

Humor Me promises to deepen your friendships, enhance your creativity, and lighten life’s burdens, and is a genuinely funny read along the way.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of images from the book

Interesting Listen

This title caught my eye because if focuses on the relationship between humor and our mental health and how we socialize. It offers a lot of great insight into humor itself, and a lot of humor is dependent on situations, cultures and contexts. Some of my favorite sections were chapter 7 which discussed laughter's role in healing and medicine and the last chapter which discussed how to avoid bad jokes.