Hi friends,
As of today, I've been sending this newsletter for four years exactly. That's four years of three things (or 618 things to be exact).
Over the past four years, I've gotten to meet and email with tons of people I wouldn't have interacted with otherwise. I've made some close real life friends, which I wouldn't have expected. And once someone stopped me on the subway and said "I'm reading your email right now!" (which I wouldn't have expected).
For me, sending these every week has been a way to make myself focus on the things I find great, funny, and interesting in the world, rather than just terrible and upsetting. I've really enjoyed that. And it's helped me get over my own hangups about telling people about the work and live shows I do. So thank you all so much for reading. I really appreciate it.
I'll keep sending and I hope you'll keep responding too. I'm always trying to keep improving (for example, is it weird that the email is called 3 Things but then the list is almost always names of humans? Should it be called something different?). But no matter what, thanks for inviting me into your inbox for the past four years.
And now, it's Saturday! So here's this week's list:
Upcoming Shows
EVERYWHERE:
Next Friday at 11:30 p.m. tune into HBO for the premiere of Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas. Link
On this week's episode of You're the Expert, Aparna Nancherla, Baratunde Thurston, and Maeve Higgins learn the sexy secrets of giant pouched rats from Dr. Danielle Lee live at NatGeo. Link
WASHINGTON, D.C.:
NEXT SATURDAY! April 14 at 7 p.m. at National Geographic. I'll be back with NatGeo Live for another You're the Expert taping with Negin Farsad, Jo Firestone, and 30 Rock's Scott Adsit. Link
NEW YORK:
NEXT SUNDAY! April 15 at 7 p.m. at Caveat. You're the Expert is back at Caveat withSNL's Gary Richardson, Ashley Brooke Roberts, and Nadia Pinder. Link
Saturday, April 28 at 4 p.m. at Caveat. I'm hosting You Get A Spoon with a performance by Dylan Marron (Conversations with People Who Hate Me), magic by Nate Dendy, and music from Friends Who Folk. Link
BOSTON, MA:
Saturday, April 21 at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Cambridge Science Festival. I'm doing two live You're the Expert shows, both open to the public (and free for MIT community thanks to generous funding from the DeFlorez Fund for Humor) Link
My full schedule with all upcoming dates is online here.
This week's list
GREAT:
Molly Ringwald was the star of three of the most iconic films about teenagers ever made:Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. She did more than just recite her lines, she played an active part in shaping the movies. Now, thirty years later, you'd think she'd be sitting on her laurels. But instead, she wrote this fascinating and beautifully written re-examination of her roles for The New Yorker. "How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it?" Read Molly Ringwald's fantastic essay: What About "The Breakfast Club?"
FUNNY:
Joe Zimmerman is endlessly curious, incredibly likable, and hilarious. He's told jokes in some of the biggest theaters in the country and has his own Comedy Central special, but now he's hit a new milestone: a fan took one of his bits and animated it. Watch as Joe walks us through the truly bizarre personal history of President Andrew Jackson.
INTERESTING:
Rukmini Callimachi is doing the painstaking and dangerous work that makes journalism so important. Her incredible expose based on analysis of thousands of documents ISIS left behind in Iraq is jaw-dropping. It also forces us to ask some uncomfortable questions, like what does it mean if a terrorist group is, in some ways, able to provide more reliable civil services to the population? Reading this piece will change the way you see the war on terror. The ISIS Files
Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If someone forwarded you this email and you want to sign up, you cansubscribe here.
Four more years! Four more years!
Chris