3 Things: Atul Gawande, Conan O'Brien, and Amazonian Hermits

Hi friends,

If you're new to these emails, welcome! Every Saturday, I send out a short email with three great things. I've also got some of my upcoming shows featured below. If you know anyone who you think would enjoy this, feel free to spread the word! They can sign up here or to see the archive of past emails, click here.

SHOW UPDATE:  

Myq Kaplan is one of the funniest (and nicest) people I know. I'll be doing his monthly showthis Monday at 8 p.m. and it's only $5! Myq Kaplan and Friends 

Then, on Sunday, May 17, I'm doing a new variety show full of prizes called "You Get A Spoon!" It's at 7 p.m. at Under St Marks and this first month I've got readings from Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker), a radio play from Brendan Pelsue and Natasha Haverty, and stories/comedy from Maeve Higgins. Details and tickets here 

Last but not least, I've got three You're the Expert tapings coming up. Boston on May 31, NYC on June 4, and DC on June 17 (details and tickets soon). 

Ok, on to this week's list!
 

1 Thing I Think Is Great:

"An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially." Atul Gawande dives deep into the structural issues with testing, compensation, and the fear of missing "something." Gawande is obviously an amazing writer, but what makes this piece so great is that it doesn't just identify a problem, it offers real solutions. I almost forgot you could do that. Overkill

 

1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:

Conan is so consistently hilarious that some of his best work ends up going unnoticed. But there is a reason he's been on the air for over 20 years. Check out this bit that didn't even make it to air. It's just Conan and T.J. Miller retaping an intro because there was an audio glitch. But it's the funniest re-tape ever. Scraps: T.J. Miller and the Audio Glitch 

If you're wondering what else Conan has been up to, he's mostly just hoping for an erotic adventure while he plays video games. 
 

1 Interesting Thing:

"Shigeru Nakayama, the guardian of this ghost city in the Amazon rain forest, gazes at the Rio Negro, a vast blackwater tributary. From some angles, it looks less like a river than a sea, spurring him to remember Japan. 'Fukuoka got kind of cold during winter,' said Mr. Nakayama, 66, who left the island of Kyushu in southern Japan with his parents and three brothers in the mid-1960s for a new life in Brazil. 'We were farming people, trying to get ahead. Japan was reduced to ashes after the war. Life was still tough. But Brazil was the land of our dreams,' said Mr. Nakayama, squinting under the punishing midday sun as he leaned his wiry frame against one of the crumbling stone buildings of Airao Velho - a town so overgrown and forlorn it is now held in a labyrinthine embrace of tree roots and vines. If anyone in this remote corner of the Amazon can attest to how dreams unfold in unanticipated ways, Mr. Nakayama certainly can." Hermit of the Jungle by Simon Romero

Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/

Have a great weekend,
Chris

3 Things: Guy Reid, Nicki Minaj's Bat Mitzvah, and Baltimore

Hi friends,

If you're new to these emails, welcome! Every Saturday, I send out a short email with three great things. I've also got some of my upcoming shows featured below. If you know anyone who you think would enjoy this, feel free to spread the word! They can sign up here or to see the archive of past emails, click here.

SHOW UPDATE:  

A couple bigger shows coming up:
-5/17 Three Great Things live in NYC at Under St Marks
-5/24 Taste Test Comedy in Cambridge, MA at ImprovBoston
-6/4 You're the Expert in NYC at Le Poisson Rouge.

Ok, on to this week's list!
 

1 Thing I Think Is Great:

Guy Reid is making incredible films that are largely shot in space. Guy's new film, Interplanetary, is on the festival circuit right now, but his short film Overview is online and you can watch for free. It's about the Overview Effect, which I hadn't heard of before. "The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts' perspective of the planet and mankind's place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment." Overview by Guy Reid

1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:

Nicki Minaj performed at a kid's bar mitzvah. Not a big deal, right? Wrong. Nicki took a photo with some 13-year-olds and Rembert Browne at Grantland wrote the most spectacular and hilariously in-depth analysis of what that photo means. Oh man, it's so good. Going Way Too Deep Down the Rabbit Hole with Nicki Minaj's Recent Bar Mitzvah Appearance 

For the record, I strongly disagree with some of his analysis regarding hand placement.
(H/T Mollie)
 

2 Interesting Things:

With everything that's happening in Baltimore right now, I've struggled to understand what's really going on and wrap my mind around it. Alex Karakatsanis' piece in the Harvard Law Review, while not directly about Baltimore, is the best analysis I've read of what's going wrong in our legal system right now. Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

For me personally, a lot of what I've seen in New York and around the country this past year can't only be processed intellectually. There's an inability of language to capture the situation, which is when art steps in. This poem by Ross Gay has been really speaking to me recently. A Small Needful Fact

Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/

Have a great weekend,
Chris

3 Things: Bear People, Meeting Tricks, and Bot Farms

Hi friends,

If you're new to these emails, welcome! Every Saturday, I send out a short email with three great things. I've also got some of my upcoming shows featured below. If you know anyone who you think would enjoy this, feel free to spread the word! They can sign up here or to see the archive of past emails, click here.

SHOW UPDATE:  

I'm in beautiful Chapel Hill right now. Last night I did Taste Test Comedy here at the DSI Theater, where I told exclusively food related jokes and all the audience members got to sample snacks from local food vendors. I'm flying to Boston tomorrow to host a special Women in Comedy Festival version of the show with jokes from Anna Drezen, Aparna Nancherla, and me, snacks from Clover, and improvised raps about food by Rachel Rosenthal and Evan Kaufman. It should be a blast! Details and tickets here. 

Tuesday in NYC, I co-host Firestone Success Academy with the delightful Jo Firestone. It's a cross between a night school and a cult, where audience members help teach us basic life skills.

Friday, I'm at the Philadelphia Science Festival for You're the Expert with Wyatt Cenac, Zhubin Parang, and Jo Firestone. Details and tickets here.

Ok, on to this week's list!
 

1 Thing I Think Is Great:

You are about to join the Bear People revolution. A wonderful thing about the comedy community is that sometimes everyone will decide they love a little random idea and run with it. Bear People is a perfect example. Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, from the musical sketch comedy group Pop Roulette, got stuck in traffic and made up a short, intensely serious song about taking care of bears. Within days, everyone I know was posting their own very earnest and hilarious covers of the song. The pure unabashed silliness and creativity of it all is what makes me love comedians so much. You know the song really took over the Internet, because Buzzfeed compiled a guide to the best covers. 

1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:

This list of tricks to make yourself look smart in meetings is not only beautifully drawn and hilarious, but a very close to a step-by-step guide for how I graduated college. English classes were all about those discussion sections and boy did "nodding continuously while pretending to take notes" work wonders. If you have ever worked in an office, you're going to want to read these. 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings (Thanks to the wonderful Sarah Kay for sharing this with me)
 

1 Interesting Thing:

If you've ever gotten a friend request from a seemingly random person or been followed on social media by a bot, you may have wondered where these fake profiles come from. Doug Bock Clark (real person) has a fascinating piece in the New Republic about the multi-million dollar business of making fake people. The Bot Bubble

Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/

Have a great weekend,
Chris