Want More Joy? Try Taking Yourself Less Seriously with Comedian Chris Duffy

21:09Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious. When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com. Okay, let's talk about something everyone has an opinion on, healthcare. Everyone can agree that something this important should work better than it does. Turns out patients aren't the only ones who think that. Optum does too, and it's why they're working day in and day out to improve it. Never heard of Optum? Think of them as the engine of healthcare. They bring together clinicians, care teams, and the way you get and manage your medications.

21:53And they use data and technology to help the health systems we all use work better as a whole, not as disconnected pieces. Because they connect all these pieces, Optum can take a more whole-person approach to healthcare, like helping patients connect to mental health support quickly and bringing primary care and prescription deliveries straight to their home so people can stay on top of their health. Those things make a big difference. And they show that Optum really is trying to make healthcare better, that their clinicians, pharmacists, data scientists, engineers, everyone is putting in the work to improve it every day.

22:28See what Optum's up to at Optum.com. I'm speaking with comedian Chris Duffy about his new book, Humor Me. Now, you might think that having a good sense of humor is all about naturally being funny, knowing how to crack a joke or deliver a solid punchline. But Chris argues that humor stems from a set of skills that anyone can develop.

22:49Chris Duffy:I think there's three pillars to good humor. The first pillar is noticing things, being present and noticing the funny and absurd in the world. The second pillar is laughing at yourself, noticing the absurd and strange and delightful in yourself and being willing to laugh at it. And then the third is putting yourself out there, taking social risks to try to break out of your everyday routine and also to risk being laughed at, to maybe celebrate being laughed at and to share it with other people. And so we're going to go through each of these pillars one by one, starting with this idea of simply noticing.

23:21And if I'm going to be honest, this one sounds easy, But I feel like in the modern day is super hard. There's so many distractions from the normal technology stuff like our phones and so on. But also just being like busy and having this capitalist mindset all the time of like, I got to work, I got to get stuff done. It just feels like there's not time to just simply notice. And you and your book share this one solution to simply notice more that I loved. You've called it the new bathroom mindset. What is that?

23:49Chris Duffy:I think that one of the biggest reasons why we don't notice funny things or strange things or interesting things, The reason why we don't notice things, period, is that we often start to kind of blur the background. We just go through our day and we're not actually noticing the actual details of things around us. And so the way that I think about this the most is the first time you go to a friend's house and you go to their bathroom, you notice everything about their bathroom. You notice where do they keep the toilet paper? Is the roll going over the top? Is their toilet seat like one of those soft, squishy ones that is like meant to sit on for a really long time?

24:20Chris Duffy:And do they sit on the toilet seat for a really long time? Wait, do people still have those? Aren't they just like from the 70s? I mean, certainly my grandma has one. I guarantee you're going to hear from a listener who's like, I have one and I love it. I'm listening to this podcast on that padded toilet seat right now. But, you know, you find all these like, do they have a pile of books in their bathroom? Are those books like weirdly wet and then dry? Like, how did they get wet? And do you even want to know what kind of soap do they use? What's out in the bathroom? What's hidden in the cabinets?

24:46Chris Duffy:These are all things that you notice the first time you go to a bathroom without trying to notice, right? It's just because it's new. we really notice that. And then if you visit that friend's house three or four times, you don't really see those things anymore. And so what I try and do and what I encourage people to do is to occasionally get into the new bathroom mindset where it's like, this is new. I'm going to actually see what is on the floor. What are the knobs on the drawers in my house? What are the switches like? What's the tree outside? All of these things that you might not necessarily notice.

25:16Chris Duffy:That is where you can see strange and odd and kind of a little off things, which are often the seeds of things that can make you laugh or can make you think or make you question or make you curious. And I think the more that we can occasionally at least build that muscle of switching into that and really seeing things, the more that we could find delightful stuff all around us. This is such a fabulous tip, and it's really similar to a tip that we heard from a former guest on The Happiness Lab, this poet Ross Gay, who wrote this book called The Book of Delights, where he decided that every day he would have to find one thing that was sort of delightful.

25:47and he kind of just had to start noticing the world in a new way to find like, where's the delightful stuff out there? He kind of opened up his delightfulness radar. And it seems like you're just doing this generally. It's almost an absurdity radar of like, what's the weird stuff? What's the kind of smooshy toilet seat that's out there? And then once you get that, you can use it as the material for humor.

26:07Chris Duffy:Totally. And I think this is the thing where, you know, what makes you laugh is not going to be the same thing that makes me laugh. It's very subjective. It's very personal. But the way that I think about this is I watched a great I swear this is going somewhere. I watched a great documentary about birdwatching. It's called Listers. I watched it on YouTube. It was so funny and fun. And I was not a birder before. And I guess I'm probably still not a birder, but I hadn't really thought about birding. And then I watched this great documentary. And afterwards, I walked outside and I was astonished at how many birds I heard.

26:35It was like tweet, tweet, tweet, just birds around.

26:37Chris Duffy:Yeah. And then I was like, am I in the middle of some sort of special migration? Like, did they just show up? And no, it was just those birds had always been there, but I had never noticed because I wasn't trying to notice them at all. I wasn't cued to notice them. And I really think that humor or delight, like Ross Gay was talking about, that these are kind of similar things where it is out there. But the more that you think about it, the more that you consciously look around for it, the more that you build the ability to see it and to know where to look for it. And you start finding more and more of the particular thing that makes you laugh.

27:05Chris Duffy:And maybe it's for me. I love signs. I love like a weird handwritten sign. Like that person is putting up a sign for their like handmade shoe party. What a strange thing. I can't imagine what that would even be. And the more that I find that, the more that it just like leads to me finding more and more of them. And I think that's true for anyone is if you just tune into this stuff, you start to see that it actually is there. Another thing you suggest we clue in on are weird facts about the world. How does this work? And what are some examples of weird facts you've noticed recently? One of the people who makes me laugh the most in the entire world is Annie Ruerda, who runs Depths of Wikipedia.

27:40Chris Duffy:For people who are not familiar, she finds facts and articles on Wikipedia that are very funny and unusual or strange and then just kind of collects them and posts them publicly and sends them out in a newsletter. And she does a live show where she shows them, too. And I interviewed Annie for the book, and I was like, I think you're one of the greatest comedians of our time. Like, Depths of Wikipedia is so funny. And she's like, oh, I'm not a comedian. I'm like a librarian, an archivist. I'm just looking at facts and then I am delighted by the facts that I find. But I don't think of myself as a comedian at all.

28:08Chris Duffy:And I was actually amazed because I think she's so incredibly funny. She said that the other day she had been correcting like a common comma error, grammatical comma error on Wikipedia and just like trying to fix as many of them as she could on the website. And it had led her to fixing a comma error on the Web page of a type of fish that was called Oreosomatidae. And she thought that's so funny that it has the word Oreo like the cookie in it. And then she looked at the fish and she said, its eye looks like an Oreo cookie. Is that why it was named that? That alone really was delightful to her that there was Oreo cookie eye fish.

28:41Chris Duffy:And she said that's kind of a way that she finds things that make her laugh is to just be open to the idea that she's doing some really mundane, not funny task. And something odd or strange can come up and she can find it. And this is related to another tip you had, which is this idea of celebrating the doll. Why is like really celebrating the doll so powerful? One of the biggest objections that people have when I tell them, like, you can find something really funny everywhere, no matter where you are, is, well, I live somewhere really boring. And the example that I love to give them, because I think it's such a masterclass in finding comedy anywhere, is the Dull Men's Club, which has now been opened up to people of all genders worldwide.

29:22Chris Duffy:They call themselves dullsters, like the opposite of hipsters. And they celebrate doing things like watching grass grow, watching paint dry, collecting paper clips. They have a calendar that they release each year, which features 12 dull men doing dull things like correcting the paint on median parking strips, like those kinds of things. It's just a truly fantastic example of sometimes the humor comes from the fact that it is so exceptionally boring. It doesn't have to be interesting, funny. It can be so boring that it is in itself becomes really funny. So like if you are literally watching paint dry, I would argue that that has become hilarious and interesting.

30:00It's like next level comedy because it's so unfunny that it has now become funny.

30:04Chris Duffy:And also like what could be more profoundly the opposite of losing three hours into the TikTok algorithm where it's like designed to be as stimulating as possible? What could be more of a powerful detox and like literally painting a wall and just watching it dry for three hours instead? Okay, so one of my favorite ridiculous things like this on the internet, I'm not sure if you participated in this, was the rubber band on the watermelon internet situation where folks were live streaming slowly putting more and more rubber bands on a watermelon until it broke. Which like the breaking of the watermelon is a wonderful moment.

30:37But I think what was more funny was like you knew that this was going to take days, weeks maybe. And a lot of it was just like watching people put rubber bands on this watermelon. Mostly it was unfunny for a long time.

30:48Chris Duffy:Yeah, I think that stuff is incredible. I think there's a reason why things like that take off. And I think it's because we are really entertained by the delightful and the odd. There's also something really countercultural about being like, we're going to celebrate the dull and the simple. there are two big social and cultural messages that are really dangerous and damaging that I think humor can undercut. And the first one is you are supposed to be perfect. And I think humor can undercut that and make us celebrate the ways in which we are a mess and we are not perfect. And actually that is what connects us to other people is the fact that we're not perfect.

31:21Chris Duffy:So that's one. And then the second is that like things need to be exciting all the time, right? That like, if you want to have a meaningful experience that it has to be exciting and different and new. And in fact, if you and some friends get together and start putting rubber bands on a watermelon, you can build an incredible memory, a really meaningful bonding experience that you will think about for the rest of your life. And there is nothing like exciting or profound or amazing about that, except for the fact that you're together and experiencing it. It doesn't have to be like we have thousands of dollars to go on a trip to Europe or we're going to make a music video that goes viral.

31:59Chris Duffy:It could literally just be like, we are going to see if we can bounce a ping pong ball into a cup. That's going to be the day and that's going to be an incredible thing for us. And so that's pillar number one. We need to notice stuff and especially notice the absurd stuff. Now we're going to turn to pillar number two, which is related to that perfectionism point. The second pillar of humor is this idea that we need to laugh at ourselves. Why is laughing at ourselves so beneficial psychologically? I think it is exactly because of the idea that we should not be perfect. that in fact, people like us more if we are not perfect and are relatable.

32:31Chris Duffy:So I think when you can laugh at yourself, when you can see your flaws as ways that other people can connect to you, things that are funny and things that are delightful rather than shameful, it one, takes all this pressure off you. And two, it actually is the way to connect with other people in a deeper way. Let me give you an example. This is the one that I think about the most. And this is funny talking to you because Laurie, I think you do a really good job of being a person who is still able to be connected to, even though you are a wildly successful and very impressive person. Even though I'm really important, is that what you're saying?

33:05Yeah, you're very important. You're very successful.

33:08Chris Duffy:I mean, you are, you're like, you are very smart and very successful and you have a lot of like institutional power and all of these things. And yet you are still able to be connected with. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that you have, you're generous with your laughter. I screw up all the time. And you're generous with that though. And I think that's a good thing, not a negative thing. Like if you walk into a party and you see a person and they go, I make a million dollars a year. Both of my kids went to Harvard. I have a six pack. I volunteer every single day and I'm changing people's lives.

33:37Chris Duffy:But also I'm going back to school to become a brain surgeon. And I just developed a new technology that can save people every single day. And did I mention that also I drive an all electric car and I compost all of my food and I don't waste anything? Like you would at best be really intimidated by that person, right? And at worst, you'd be like, I hate that guy. I never want to see that guy again. He's my least favorite person I've ever met because he makes me feel bad about myself. The flip side is like, if you meet a person who is like, hey, there's things that I'm good at and there's things that I'm bad at and I'm totally a mess.

34:07Chris Duffy:And I have to ask you a question. I know we just met, but is there a giant piece of spinach in my teeth? Because I'm pretty sure there's a giant piece of spinach in my teeth. You're so much more likely to like that person because they're relatable and they're able to be laughed at and laughed with. But here's the thing that I think we often get wrong is like we see that in other people, but then we think we should be the first. We're like, well, I should be as impressive as possible and I should be as perfect as possible and I should have as few flaws as possible. That's how other people will like me, even though we know we don't like that person.

34:35Chris Duffy:You know, I walked outside the other day. I have two young kids and I was like saying hi to people on the street while I was walking my kids around. And I came home and realized my hair is like truly standing straight up on end. Like I was electrocuted. Like I could not look more bizarre and unfit for public consumption. I was wondering, like, why are people giving me funny looks when they say hi back? And then I came back and I was like, oh, that's why. And I think that could be a really shameful moment. I could be like, I can't believe I went outside. I'll never be able to face the neighbors again.

35:03Chris Duffy:Or I can laugh at it and be like, yep, I got two kids and I woke up early and I forgot that it had been several hours and I still hadn't showered or combed my hair. And laughing about it makes me feel better. But I guarantee you, it also makes the neighbors feel more like they could talk to me. And not like I'm like some intimidating superhuman, which, again, I don't think there's any risk of them thinking that. But that's the reality is that we connect to people through these flaws. And it seems like we also connect to ourselves better. You know, you mentioned this idea of like I could have been shameful about the hair looking stupid.

35:30It seems like one thing humor helps us do is to laugh at ourselves with self-compassion. It helps us feel less shameful. Is that the kind of thing that you've seen in some of your work? Yeah, I think the only reason I'm hesitating right now is because I don't want to say like

35:45Chris Duffy:we should laugh at ourselves and then not strive to be better. It's not like laugh and then you don't have to fix your glaring personality flaw. But I think that if we laugh about it, often the laughing is acknowledging that it's a thing. And when we acknowledge that it is a thing that maybe is like something that is not our finest moment or our strongest personality suit, if we laugh about it, I think that lets us acknowledge it in a way that actually allows us to work on it. You know, shame rarely leads to action. And so I think the fact that we can laugh and say like, oh, boy, I have not showered as much as I would like to shower, then can be like, OK, I'm going to try and find a time where I'm going to say, hey, can you watch the kids for one second while I jump in the shower?

36:27Chris Duffy:Because I don't want to have a repeat of the electric shock hair thing. And that's a small, like low stakes example. But I think there's way bigger, higher stakes examples that you can apply this to as well. So that's the power of acknowledging some of our imperfections. We notice them and want to do something. I worry sometimes we swing the pendulum too far in the other direction where we're not just acknowledging our flaws, but kind of bullying ourselves about our flaws. And so any advice for being able to laugh at ourselves and use self-deprecation without turning that into self-bullying? I think you probably encountered this a lot on this podcast.

36:59Chris Duffy:And I know that I have encountered a lot of my work too, which is that often the most powerful advice, the things that are most impactful aren't universal. It's not like one size fits all. So I can't really say like, this is the way that you should laugh at yourself that will never be self-bullying. And this is the way that's always positive because it is going to vary from person to person. I can give you a kind of like a framework of a way to think about testing it. But I do think you need to realize that like, it's going to vary from how someone else does it. And it also might vary from how you do it today to how you do it tomorrow or in a year, right?

37:31Chris Duffy:Like we are more or less sensitive about certain things. We are more or less confident about certain things day to day. So the test that I would say is, are you laughing in a way that is creating an opportunity for connection? Or are you laughing at yourself in a way that is trying to say the mean thing before someone else can say it? And are you doing it in a way that is like, if someone else said it to another person, would you think that they were being a bully? I'll give you an example is the comedian Aparna Nancherla told me that she used to open her comedy sets by saying, I know, I'm also surprised that I'm a comedian.

38:04Chris Duffy:And when Aparna said that, she told me like she originally meant it as like, well, I'm a shy introvert. And like, that's what I mean. It's like, I'm surprised that I'm out here telling jokes because I'm a shy introvert. But she realized that a lot of audiences were laughing because they were like, it's funny because you are a small Indian woman. And she didn't want to be making fun of herself in that way to say, like, I shouldn't be here because that's not what a comedian is supposed to be. And she also realized, like, maybe I don't even want to say I shouldn't be her because I'm an introvert.

38:29Chris Duffy:Maybe I want to just own the fact that, like, I'm here. And so she stopped doing that joke. She stopped telling that joke because she realized it actually was like creating a narrative and bullying herself in a way that she did not want to do. And I think that's important to realize. So think about, like, are you bringing people in or are you pushing people away from acknowledging the thing about yourself? It's time for another break, but when we return, Chris will break down the third and final pillar of good humor, taking social risks. And then it will be my turn to take a risk as Chris puts me through a live improv comedy exercise.

39:06The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

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43:39Your book argues that humor is all about taking social risks, but why is humor so socially risky and can you share some examples?

43:47Chris Duffy:I think this is probably one of the most cited things in your field. And I bet people bring up this all the time on this podcast, which is research that shows that if you talk to a stranger on the bus, you're going to have a better day and that they'll have a better day too. Okay. Everyone hears that study and they go, that sounds good for you. There's no way I'm talking to a stranger on the bus. That's too weird. And yet it's true that you will have a better day if you do it. So that's like a very clear example of taking a small social risk, talking to someone you wouldn't necessarily talk to.

44:14Chris Duffy:And I think one of the biggest things that can stop you from finding humor and from laughing more and from having delight in your life is just doing things that you always do, right? Like you commute in the exact same way. You never see anything different. You always take the same train, you get off at the same stop, you walk the same way, or you always take the same road to the highway, to the exit. It's just, you know it so well. And it is almost impossible for that to not totally blur into the background unless you're really, really fighting hard. And so the social risk that you might take might be the smallest social risk of all.

44:43Chris Duffy:It might be just doing things a little differently so that there's an element of novelty and adventure and excitement. And that can often lead to sparking something funny or strange or delightful where you see something that you haven't seen before because you get off at a different stop and you're walking back and you go, has that been there all along? One thing that I try and do is if people invite me to a thing that sounds strange, then I'm like, I'm gonna go to that. My friends invited me to a gathering of owners of golden doodles. It was called a doodle romp. And I do not own a golden doodle.

45:15Chris Duffy:So my natural inclination would be to say, Thank you so much. The social gathering that is exclusively for owners of this one particular type of dog. Probably not for me. I don't even own a dog at all. And instead, I was like, I'm going to the doodle romp and I'm going to experience golden doodle culture. And I went and it was so funny and strange because to me, it was just like all these identical dogs running and jumping around on each other. And all of the owners like apologizing that their dog was jumping on the other dog, even though all the dogs were jumping on each other. And then talking about like doodle hair care tips and things like that.

45:44Chris Duffy:And it was just such a strange, different world for me that everything about it kind of made me laugh. But for them, this was just like their normal social scene. So saying yes to something like that can be a real delight. Another time I moved to Los Angeles and I was looking for ways to meet new people. And I didn't really know anyone in the city. And a friend said, I know this is really strange, but there's a group that meets at 7 a.m. They've been meeting for almost 100 years. Every Wednesday at 7 a.m., it's called the Los Angeles Breakfast Club. And they sing a bunch of songs about how much they love breakfast food.

46:13Chris Duffy:and then they have a secret handshake that's like flipping a pancake and they eat eggs together. And I think it's maybe a cult, but it's like a very friendly cult. Would you like to come? And I said, absolutely. I will be up at 6.30 so that I can be at your breakfast cult at seven. And I went and it was so delightful and so memorable. And it changed the whole way I saw the city to know like there's a hundred people that get together and sing songs about breakfast every Wednesday. It's been happening for almost a hundred years. That's now like permanently ingrained in my understanding of LA. So switching up your routine, going to things that are a little different, trying things that might lead to people going like, that's weird that you did that.

46:50Chris Duffy:I think those are the social risks that pay off the biggest. They're also the kinds of things that can connect us most with other people. You've talked a lot about how we can use humor as this form of shared lore, like using inside jokes to build up relationship capital. Explain what you mean there. Often the people you laugh with the most are the people you've known for the longest. And so much of that is because you develop this language with people, right? And everyone has some version of that. And it's actually not very funny to tell other people about your inside jokes. But what it does is it reinforces something with you and the other person.

47:21Chris Duffy:It builds that connection. It makes you laugh. And it creates other opportunities for like callbacks and ways for this thing to grow and expand. Like my friend Sarah has a game that she plays where she goes to a diner and touches something on the diner table and then makes a pun about it. Like she'll touch the top of a salt shaker and say top of the morning to you. And then the other person will touch, you know, the handle of a mug and say, that's too much to handle. And so I know that if I send her a photo of something on a diner table and say a pun related to it, that she's going to get it and that it won't just be like a random text, but it'll be something that makes her feel seen, makes her feel known and makes us feel connected.

47:56Chris Duffy:When I was talking to people about why humor evolved, I learned about a scientist at UCLA, Greg Bryant, and his theory is called encryption theory. And the idea is basically that when we are presented with something that is funny, it is only funny if the other person has the key to the lock that can unlock it and answer that riddle. And then they laugh and you would know that you two were in the same group. And if they didn't laugh or they fake laughed, you would know, oh, they were actually not part of my same group and that that was very evolutionarily beneficial. And that's why we see humor across all cultures and why pretty much everyone is pretty good at detecting a fake laugh.

48:30Chris Duffy:So I think that sense that like I can use humor as a way of telling you that you and I are connected, that we're in the same group and that I see you and that you're not alone. To me, that is the big picture thing is that it's a way of not feeling alone. Especially with this evolutionary argument that you're mentioning, it's almost like you're putting out these encrypted jokes and hoping that other people get it. But they might be like, why did you send me a picture of a salt shaker? Like, what is going on? It feels pretty vulnerable. Totally. And so you've argued that we need to find ways to bypass our internal sensor.

48:58And creativity, interestingly, can help us do this. Tell me about some of the studies that have shown that.

49:03Chris Duffy:Oh, yeah. So this is really interesting is that they put jazz improvisers in an MRI machine and they had them improvise. And what they found is that the parts of the brain that are like self-critical, the parts of the brain that monitor yourself, they were really, really deactivated. And the parts of the brain that were like working were the creative and affiliative ones. So like making connections and going from this note to that note. But they weren't really paying attention to what they were doing. The like voice in their head that says, is what you're doing right? Is that cool? Is that good?

49:30Chris Duffy:Is that impressive? That was really shut down. And I think many of us who have experienced like flow and creativity, we found that you have these moments where you are at your most creative and you can't 100 % remember what you did afterwards. And it's because you're not actually keeping track of it. And so I think the more that you can get past the side of yourself that says like, this might be bad, this might get rejected, the more that you can do the really funny, fun examples. I can actually do an exercise with you that I used to do a lot with people when I taught improv. Please. Which I think just really basically gets us past this.

50:00Chris Duffy:If I ask you to say some things in a category, like if I just say, Lauren, name as quick as you can without thinking, name a few different kinds of cereal. Cheerios, Captain Crunch, Count Chocula, Boo Berry, Franky Berry. Great. So right there, you can think that many ahead, right? You said some real reasonable answers. But if I told you - I love that you think Frankenberry is a reasonable answer. Is Frankenberry not real? It sounds real. I totally believe that. No, it's real. It's real. It's just not, you know. But like if I say like now, don't worry if what you're saying is right or true or even like makes sense.

50:32Chris Duffy:You did like four or five. What if I say like, let's go to seven and we're going to do a different category. So you can't have already thought about it. But the point is, don't worry if like if I said types of cereal and at the end you'd said shoe, that's fine. That's a totally good answer. Right. The point is to get past what is the right quote unquote answers and the logical ones into something that is just like instinctive and honest and authentic. And that is often the most creative answer. So let's try it again. And maybe actually so that it's fair and I'm not just putting you on the spot.

51:00Chris Duffy:First, you give me, say, Chris, give me seven different and then it can be any kind of category and I'll do it as fast as I can. And all you have to do is after each thing I say, you say one all the way to seven. Chris, give me seven different pieces of clothing. Shirts, pants, clothes, socks, earmuffs, earplugs, Six. Ear wigs. Seven. Ding, ding, ding. Okay, so. Ear wigs. Ear wigs is, I think, an insect, not a type of clothes. But in my mind, it was like the little hair that you put in your ear to simulate your hair. So, very weird. Not the most predictable normal one that I would have come up with.

51:35Yeah, ear merkin came up creatively in, like, the strange thing that you do.

51:38Chris Duffy:You know, the point is not that, like, that's genius. The point is just, like, it's interesting and different. It's not boring. And I think we can get past the boring answers when we just forget about, like, whether I'm going to look good. whether my answer is going to make sense to the podcast listeners and to you and just start doing it. So let me give it to you. Seven different things that you might find inside your car. Charger. One. The little thingy that lights up cigarettes. Two. Old McDonald's wrappers. Three. A parking pass. Four. Keys. Five. My husband. Six. Random people that I'm taking on errands.

52:11Seven.

52:11Chris Duffy:Okay, great. I love that it was all that stuff. And then also it turns out your car is totally full of humans. Oh, yeah. My husband's in the car, too. Yeah. Your husband and a bunch of people who you're taking on errands. That's great. And I think, like, again, that image that you just painted of like there's the car charger and there's the cigarette lighter thing. There's the old McDonald's reference, but there's also some strangers and your husband. That's such a vivid image that's like real and creative. And I think as an artist, right, like there's a lot that we can do with that kind of specifics that's very ripe for art, but it's also ripe for comedy.

52:42And it seems to really build our social connection, too. Like now we're kind of joking about it. We have the earwig joke and the McDonald's rapper joke. And we will always have earmark in, Chris, whenever we. I'm going to get that on a T-shirt.

52:53Chris Duffy:That's for sure. I also think like this connects to like the most common way that people avoid taking the social risk, which is to just have the same conversation over and over. Right. Hey, how are you doing? Where are you from? What do you do? OK, nice to meet you. And this fits with another tip that you've talked about, the importance of adding in conversational doorknobs into your life. What do you mean by conversational doorknobs? Yeah, so this comes from Adam Mastroianni, an incredible writer and academic who studies how conversations end and whether people want them to end or not. And he read about how one of the things that we can do in a conversation is create an affordance.

53:26Chris Duffy:So like a physical affordance would be something like a ramp that can help someone get into a building if they can't walk up the stairs. And a conversational affordance is a way that they can latch into the conversation and have something to talk about, even if they don't necessarily do it. And he talks about how if you say something that is interesting and unusual, it presents an opportunity for someone to turn that doorknob and open the conversation into a new room. Right. So if I say the other day I had a soup that changed my life, that is so much more likely for the other person to be able to say something to you or to ask you questions than if you say weather's been pretty wild lately.

54:01Chris Duffy:Right. Like the most common thing that someone's going to say to that is, yeah, it has. And then you're fizzling out after maybe two more sentences. Whereas if you say the soup thing, they could go, where was it? Or, you know, I've always hated soup. And then either way, you have stuff to talk about. So creating these like slight risks of talking about something that is not exactly the thing can create a conversational doorknob that can lead you into an unexpected room. And now you're more connected. It seems pretty similar to a comedy technique that you also talk about this idea of doing a yes and collaboration building.

54:31Like it seems like the conversational doorknob is a kind of you're throwing it out there and somebody is going to pick it up and kind of go with it from there. Is that right? Totally.

54:38Chris Duffy:I mean, yes. And is like the basis of all improvised comedy. And it's that if I say to you, like, Laurie, we're on a spaceship. You don't go. No, we're not. Because then, OK, well, the scene's pretty much over. And obviously, we're not most of the time performing improvised comedy for an audience, but we are almost always improvising our conversations. and the idea that you would want to agree with the person and then build on it and then that they would agree with you and build on what you said, that is how you lead to a conversation that as Adam Astriani puts it, like feels like you're floating, like you're flying, like it's going somewhere and not crashing to the earth.

55:10Chris Duffy:And also the spirit of that is to make the other person look good, to not have it be about you adding your great genius anecdote, but instead to take what they said, to view it as a gift and then to give them a gift back and allow them to use that. Well, Chris, thank you so much for giving my listeners the gift of helping them become more humorous. Just one last question. Has remembering that humor is this muscle that you can build up over time helped you be happier? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think this happens to a lot of people who write a nonfiction book where I'm like, it turns out that I desperately needed this book.

55:41Chris Duffy:You know, I had a second kid in the course of writing this book. And as I've been promoting it, we're like in the newborn phase and I haven't been getting that much sleep. And it's so easy each day to just feel like I'm totally overwhelmed and that there's so many things that haven't done. And when I'm able to get out of my self-seriousness and to laugh about the things that are happening and to laugh about the fact that I'm, you know, trying to prep for a big, important interview and my child has just thrown up all over my face, like that, when I can laugh about it, I have a much better day. If you'd like more of Chris's advice on how to bring more humor into your life, check out his new book, Humor Me, How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy.

56:20And you can hear more from Chris on his award-winning podcast, How to Be a Better Human. Next week, we'll wrap up our back-to-school book series with author Eric Wiener. He'll share his thoughts on what a 19th century philosopher who lived alone in the woods can teach us about shifting our perspective in the modern age.

56:36Chris Duffy:There was something odd about him. He had these piercing eyes that people find kind of scary, to be honest. He would just look at things for a long time with those eyes. And he had this almost superhuman sense of smell and hearing. That's all next week on Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

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