How to Have a Better Sense of Humor (W/ Dan Harris and Guests) | How to Be a Better Human | TED

You're watching How to be a better human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and today on the show, we are talking about something that I think is maybe one of the most important human skills out there. How to have a better sense of humor. I have increasingly come to believe over the 5 years that I've hosted this show that something that unites all of the lessons that I've learned is being able to laugh at yourself, being able to notice absurdity, and to not be crushed by the weight of the world. So, today on the show, we're going to give you an insight into some of these ideas that have been rattling around my brain. And boy, a lot rattles around in there. It's largely empty. These are some of my favorite clips from previous episodes. Clips where we are talking about humor, often with people who you wouldn't necessarily think about laughing as much as they can in their daily lives. To get us started, we are going to talk about the surprising overlap between silent meditation and stand-up comedy. Our guest is the author and journalist and the host of the 10% Happier podcast, Dan Harris. I know you don't necessarily identify as a comedian, but you have a great sense of humor. There are hilarious jokes in your book. There are really funny jokes in your TED talk. And I think that is not necessarily a thing that I actually associated at all with mindfulness or meditation is funny and laughing. AB: — Absolutely. You know what's so interesting is that if you get to know, as I have because it's my job now, I'm like kind of like the beat reporter for Buddhism. Um, you I get I know a huge percentage of the living teachers today because they come through my show and I write about them in my books and so I know a lot of these people like I really know them. They, you know, I have dinner meals with them. I do business with them. They sleep over at the house. I really know these people and they're really funny. They don't tend to emphasize the humor in their public facing work, which I I'm not quite sure why that is. I'm a little bit glad because it's created a market opening for me. But I do think that if you spend any amount of time taking a look at your mind, you will have to laugh eventually because it's ridiculous. The meditation teacher that I work with personally, his name is Joseph Goldstein. He's, you know, a great friend of mine and just a huge figure in my life. But he the he uses that word ridiculous a lot. uh he it comes up a lot and because if you're looking at your mind I mean it's chaos and it's embarrassing it's humiliating and but a after a while you can learn to laugh at it and I find that spirit is shot through many of the teachers that I know the greats don't take themselves seriously because how could you after looking at your mind for an extended period of time there's also this thing that I I've been thinking about a lot with humor how you have to be really present to notice the unusual, weird, ridiculous things in the world. Like a lot of our day-to-day, we're programmed both by society and just by, you know, the sheer fact that so many pieces of stimulus come at us. We, if we've seen something a million times, we just ignore it. And yet, when you start to really look at things, that's when you can see the funny. And I noticed that comedians that I know, one of the few things that they all have in common, even if they have wildly different styles, is that anytime they notice something funny or strange, they take a note of it. And that is actually quite a similar practice to some forms of Buddhist meditation to just be noticing and paying attention to the things that go through our heads and through our perception. — Gold star. That's a great observation. I mean it really is. I mean observation is a huge part of comedy and you can't observe if you're asleep. So for sure there is an overlap right there between comedy and contemplation. This contemplation or meditation is all about waking up. because we live our lives in this kind of automatic pilot. Not much can get done when you're in that mode and sadly we're in that mode a lot. I you know it's bringing to mind a story about how and I wrote about this in my first book where I was on the beach with a friend of mine who's a very successful comedy writer and this was many years ago but he's gone on to be way more successful and I was read he spotted me reading a book about Buddhism and he said I don't think I could go down that path because I need to stay judgmental because my comedy comes from being judgmental but I wish that the technology worked that well that you could start meditating and you're not going to be judgmental or cranky or crazy or whatever all the What happens is you just get to be more familiar with the way the mind works. And so I think it can put your comedy on steroids because you can notice the judgment that's going to come inevitably. Um, and that instead of being owned by it, you can make a joke out of it. And that's really helpful. — I really believe that you can find humor and laughter just about anywhere. And to prove it, in this next clip, we are going to find laughter in the literal dirt. That is right. In the ground where plants grow with Alexis Nicole Nelson talking about the joys and the comedy of foraging for wild plants. Also, I'm curious that about the times when people

are surprised to see you doing what you're doing or foraging because they just don't understand what foraging is. Like, have you ever had someone spot you foraging and have a really strange or interesting reaction to that? — Absolutely. My first year making Tik Toks, I was gathering some mugwart around this time of year and two women who were just power walking together stopped in their tracks and were just like, "What are you doing? " And I was just like, "Oh, you know, just gathering some aromatic herbs. I wanted to roast some potatoes tonight and I needed some mugwart and here it is. " Honestly, it was a great interaction. and they had so many questions and for them it just wasn't it was just not something they ever expected to see anybody doing. I think my identity maybe made it more surprising but even if it was someone their own age I think they would have been really surprised and those are always really delightful moments when people approach it with just like a childlike curiosity. I love those times. Uh there are definitely other times when people approach it from a point of apprehension being like, "Oh my god, I don't know what that 6- foot tall, very loud, gregariously dressed black woman is doing, so I'm going to go ask her about it. " But I like to think that usually I end up changing that apprehension to delight almost every time. It definitely hasn't worked every single time. — Yeah. It's cool though to imagine like you think that you know the space and then you see someone doing something that you don't expect in the space and all of a sudden it's like wait a second that's edible that's delicious. That's a thing that's even there. I thought this was just a lawn or a field. Exactly. We have become like so disconnected from food that to us when you think of food most people would think of like a grocery store or something bought from the grocery store. I think it surprises people that people are finding food outside even though where else would it be growing? — I used to teach at an elementary school. I taught fifth grade and I remember so clearly that one day we were reading a book. It wasn't even a science lesson or something. It was just a book where it kind of came up incidentally and it said like and they picked the lettuce out of the ground and the kids were like lettuce comes from the dirt. Oh, that's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. It grows out of dirt. — Which is like hilarious, of course. Like, you have to learn that at some point. But, but the other thing is, and I feel like this is maybe uh I wonder if this is the thing that must not be said in foraging circles. But I'm like, they also have kind of a point. It's a little gross that things come out of the dirt and that they're fed by poop and like rotting things. I'm like, you know what? It is gross and it's delicious and that's just how things work. — And that's life, baby. It is delightful and it is often icky and there are usually bugs. That's life. — That's a great phrase for life. I put that on a t-shirt. I'll buy that t-shirt. — Le Bestnet is the founder of Public Works and the resident director at the Public Theater in New York City. Lear is a theater creator who thinks really deeply about spectacle. She cares so much about creating a big amazing moment that's memorable. And Lear doesn't just see that on stage. She sees it every day in New York City where she lives, whether it's on the subway or on the street outside of her office or outside of her home. And talking to her, it made me think about all of the hilarious, silly, truly absurd moments that happened to me growing up in New York City where Lear now lives. So, I grew up in New York City and my um I was obsessed for at least three or four years of my childhood with this street performer who performed at the South Street Seapport and her name was the squirrel lady. And what she would do, her act was she would stand on an upturned like mail crate. And then if you gave her a dollar, she would take a sleeve of saltine crackers and she would just destroy eat them like a little squirrel. Like just like making like spraying saltine crackers everywhere. And I was like, "That person is Michelangelo. That is my Dainci. " I was like, "That is the greatest genius of our time. " And I would beg, constantly beg like, "Can I have a dollar and can we please go see The Squirrel Lady? " And to this day, I still think it's one of the most incredible pieces of art I've ever seen. — Oh my gosh. Uh, well, thank you for sharing. This is now a new obsession of mine. And my question is like, is she available? Because I would like her to be in my next production. My belief is that she retired to some mansion funded by her squirrel performance. But I haven't seen her in literally a decade, so I don't know. But — yes, — I if she was in a production, I would fly anywhere in the world for that ticket. I would certainly go.

— There is no limit to the um the types of performers you can find in New York City. But also more broadly to your point like in the world anywhere there are people who have these like little unusual strange things that would be perfect for spectacle. — Yes. And my dream is to sort of walk through life noticing those things and then to ask a person to do like whatever that thing is to do like exactly that in the production and to somehow create the conditions within the story. whatever that person is doing makes sense in a storytelling way. That was my dream. — Two people who have dedicated their careers to making sure that any story can be told are Dave Nadleberg and Neil Catcher, founders of Mortified, one of the funniest shows that I have ever seen in my life. It is a podcast. It is a live stage show. And what it is getting people to share their tragically hilarious journal entries from when they were teenagers or middle schoolers. They read them aloud in front of a crowd and it transforms something that is often unbelievably cringeworthy and embarrassing into something that is hilarious and glorious and a form of art. It is so fun to witness one of their shows and talking to the people who have actually been on stage. It's so fun to watch this memory that often made you just like curl up and want to die transform into something that entertains other people and gets this big cathartic laugh. Here's how Neil and Dave do it. So I have done stand up but I also started I was a fifth grade teacher and the thing that has influenced my life most from being a fifth grade teacher is the idea of a growth mindset right that like almost nothing about who we are is fixed that you can you maybe have natural abilities or talents but that you can build these muscles and I think a muscle that uh mortified is so great at showing is the muscle of like you can build the muscle of laughing at yourself. like taking this stuff and finding it to be funny and transforming it into a strength rather than a private shameful weakness. — Yeah. Life is not always kind and so it's a very to you know it's a very comforting thing you know the reminder that we mess up and you know like you know and like the end of at the end of every Mortified podcast and stage show we say uh what did we learn? Well, we learned a million things but most of all we learned that we are freaks and we are fragile and we all survived. To me, I take all that to heart. It's not just like a piffy thing. Um because I think these are valuable. Like there is a lesson to that and you could whether that comes from a thing like mortified or um or whether you can apply that same logic to a million other things in life. Did I say life weird? I think I did. — I think I said laugh. I didn't even notice it as weird, but I love it. — I have faith and better in the future though. — Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, growth mindset. — I want to leave you with a piece of a conversation that I had with the Palestinian peace activist, author, and travel company founder Aziz Abusara. Aziz works a lot on very dark, very heavy, and tragic issues, especially with the ongoing war in Gaza. But Aziz himself is anything but dark and depressing. He is light. He is hilarious. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met. Talking to Aziz, it really highlights for me the point that humor can be much more than just silly goofiness. It can be a coping mechanism. way to find the strength to survive something that is so unbelievably daunting. Now, obviously, not everyone is going to find humor in every situation. Of course not. But for some people, it can be a real way to transform sorrow, to transform grief, to transform tragedy into something where you have a momentary release, a way to let off some of the pressure and to find a way to move forward. you know, we got to spend a fair amount of time together in Vancouver and I had it was such a pleasure to get to know you and to see your public talk, but also to have dinner with you and talk casually. And something that I've been thinking about since then when I think about our interactions is how there are ways that identity can really get flattened when we talk about these big issues like the conflict in Palestine and Israel. There's this way in which you, for example, can be presented only as this very serious person, right? this victim of the conflict but also a peacemaker. But you are also so much more than that. You're hilarious. You're funny. You're complex. You're not any one thing. So, how do you personally push back against that? How do you push back against the flattening that comes in with the idea that you are a Palestinian and that is all that you are and you are the cultural image of Palestine rather than the actual person, the actual Palestinian you are. — It's a challenge. It's a challenge I've faced through my whole career. One, I use a lot of humor in everything I do because that's part of who I am. And I uh if I was as brave as you, I would have done standup comedy more often. I've done it a couple of times

and man, it is so hard to to put yourself out there and hope people will laugh in the first 30 seconds of speaking. — Well, certainly there's one of the two of us that's brave. It maybe that neither of us is brave but certainly it's not me. — Nah, you are. You absolutely are. Uh but yeah, I try to definitely show that I am not only one identity. I don't want you to only look at Palestinians with pity or look at us only as victims. We are much more than that. I grew up like many Palestinians loving poetry. I started writing poetry when I was seven or eight. It was terrible poetry, but I still wrote poetry when I was that young. I used to call the radio almost every week to read my poetry. Now I'm very embarrassed of the kind of poetry I read on the radio. But that's how you know our culture is so different than what people think. And often I get like oh your culture is so much a culture of death which is not the culture I grew up with. Uh you have people like Sam Kasim who wrote when the day I'm killed the my killer will rifle through my pockets and he'll find three tickets one to peace one to the fields and the rain and one to the conscience of a humankind. I beg you my killer do not waste such a thing. Do not ignore these tickets. Take them. I beg you to travel. That is one of our most famous poem poets. And it's not a poem about glorifying death. It's telling his killer in a time where he feels so much conflict around him. I don't want this to continue. Even if the price is my death, I don't want you to live in this reality. And that's what I want the world to know. We not only victims. We not, you know, even in this hard moments and looking what's happening in Gaza and so much death and so much suffering and so much pain. If you only see people as victims them in one small box, it's much easier also to dehumanize them. It's much easier to not see them as normal people who have dreams, who want to be teachers, want to be doctors, want to be comedians, want to be all these things. And that's what I want people to know about me. And Palestinians in general, Muslims, Arabs in America. That that's the I think that's where we start.