3 Things: Jo Firestone, Austin Kleon, and Bianca Giaever

Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my upcoming shows, one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting.

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
This season of You're the Expert just wrapped up but you can listen to all of the episodes online or wherever you get podcasts. Link

My wife Mollie's book just got a great writeup in Time.  It's called "No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work" and it comes out exactly one month from today (February 5th). You can see more about it and pre-order here: Link

I'm still on a bit of a break from performing this week, but starting in February, I'll be on a national tour and I'm hoping to have all those dates official and announced in the next two weeks. As always, you'll be able to find my schedule with all upcoming dates online here.

This week’s list

GREAT:
This past week, Jo Firestone wrote about handling the death of a friend for The New York Times. The piece is funny, it's moving, and it's beautiful. "Accept the lasagna. Do not read that Joan Didion book." For anyone who's dealt with (or is currently dealing with) loss, Jo captures the confusing swirl of emotions perfectly. The world is a better place with Jo in it and I admire her as a comedian and a human. Tell Me One More Time What to Do About Grief

(Adina, who Jo's writing about, was an amazing writer as well and I strongly recommending pairing Jo's piece with Adina's essay "I Must Have Been That Man.")

 
FUNNY:
Austin Kleon is a visual artist and poet, but he's also become one of the leading voices writing about creativity. His bestselling books Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work are excellent primers on creative life and his blog is full of small, useful tips and observations. While reading his year-end roundup, I stumbled across some of his posts about parenting, which made me laugh a lot. Especially the way he and his wife reacted when they discovered their son had draw in crayon all over their new expensive couch. I love it.Accidents Will Happen


INTERESTING:
In a perfect combination of all the themes in today's list (from childhood to loss to creativity), Bianca Giaever produced a fantastic audio episode of Frontline for kids about the global refugee crisis. Using real questions from kids in the U.S. and then getting answers from children growing up in one of the world's largest refugee camps in Kenya, her story manages to be funny and insightful. It cuts through the noise in a way that many pieces about migration unfortunately do not. And it's certainly worth listening to no matter what age you are. Muzamil's Day (After you listen, look at the accompanying photos and multimedia piece too.)


Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If you're reading this for the first time (maybe someone forwarded you this email?), you can subscribe here.

Happy New Year!
Chris

3 Things: Esmeralda Santiago, John McPhee, and Allison Keeley

Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my upcoming shows, one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting.

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
The newest episode of You're the Expert features neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman talking with comedians Wyatt Cenac, Maeve Higgins, and Negin Farsad. Link

My wife Mollie and her co-author Liz Fosslien wrote a book called "No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work." It's out in 2019 but available for pre-order now: Link

I'm taking a little bit of time off from live shows for the holidays, but I'll be back and touring in late January. Once I announce them, you'll be able to find my schedule with all upcoming dates online here.

This week’s list

GREAT:
Last week, I got to see my friend Antonia Cereijido interview the author Esmeralda Santiago for the 25th anniversary of her memoir When I Was Puerto Rican. Santiago is an amazing writer, incredibly charismatic, and has so much to say about identity, education, and language. If you haven't read her book, I highly recommend it. Antonia also asked Santiago about a more recent event in her life. Eight years ago, a stroke left her unable to read. For a lifelong writer and actor, it was devastating. But "Santiago realized that she had gone through this experience, in a way, before. When she moved to New York City from Puerto Rico, at 13 years old, she spoke no English. If she could learn a new language then, she would be able to learn again." You can hear her tell Antonia about that process and reclaiming written language on NPR's LatinoUSA.  Esmeralda Santiago Relearns How to Read

 
FUNNY:
John McPhee is one of my favorite writers. While he's certainly not a comedian, I think his nonfiction work has a great sense of humor. He tends to pick an extremely random topic (say, oranges) and then dive into an insane depth on it. A lot of the best comedians do the same thing, whether it's Jim Gaffigan obsessing about pie or Tig Notaro analyzing each and every vocal tic that goes into a "That's What She Said" joke. I finished McPhee's latest book, The Patch, and one section I particularly loved was about how desperately he wants to see a bear outside his house in New Jersey. Direct Eye Contact


INTERESTING:
Allison Keeley is a freelance journalist based in Mexico and she covered a wild story about the multi-million dollar world meteorite hunters for WIRED. "In the remote high plains of Peru, a red-hot chunk of rock plummeted from the heavens, making landfall with a tremendous blast. Half a world away, meteorite hunters like Robert Ward got word and rushed to get a piece of the action. Then things got weird." The Mad Scramble to Claim the World's Most Coveted Meteorite


Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If you're reading this for the first time (maybe someone forwarded you this email?), you can subscribe here.

We're almost done with 2018!
Chris

3 Things: Emily Winter, ClickHole, and Joe Wong

Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my upcoming shows, one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting.

Upcoming Shows

EVERYWHERE:
This week's episode of You're the Expert features neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman talking about her groundbreaking research into neuro-resilience. Comedians Wyatt Cenac, Maeve Higgins, and Negin Farsad find out all about how her brain works. Link

My wife Mollie and her co-author Liz Fosslien wrote a book called "No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work." It's out in 2019 but available for pre-order now: Link

SEATTLE:
Thursday, December 27th at 7:30 p.m. at The Annex Theatre. Riley Mulherkar (of The Westerlies) and I are going to be in town and we're continuing our holiday tradition of putting on a night of music and comedy.  Link

I'll be announcing more shows in 2019. As always, you'll be able to find my schedule with all upcoming dates online here.

This week’s list

GREAT:
At the end of the year, we tend to take stock. It's great to feel proud of everything you've accomplished, but too often we ignore the role that our failures played in getting us to our successes. Emily Winter, a very funny comic, has an article in the NYT about her 2018 goal to get professionally rejected at least 100 times. "Being told no is inevitable in most creative endeavors. But maybe I could win by losing." (If you're writing about your failures in the paper of record, you know you did something right.) I Got Rejected 101 Times (h/t my mom)

 
FUNNY:
I sometimes feel like the Internet is just the source of misery, conspiracy theories, and terrible news. But then I go to The Onion or ClickHole and I realize it's not all bad. ClickHole is a refuge of pure, insane, hilarity online. In the writers room this week, we were dying laughing at this article. Every line is perfect. And there has never been a better photo to accompany a title.  "Catastrophic Misstep: The Reptile Guy At This School Assembly Just Handed A Huge Snake To The Most Straight-Up Insane Kid in Fifth Grade"(h/t Eliza Cossio)


INTERESTING:
Joe Wong is a comedian respected by comics and loved by audiences. He's performed on Colbert and Letterman and roasted Vice President Joe Biden. But if that weren't impressive or difficult enough, he's now gone on to be the funniest (and one of the most famous) comedians in China. To be able to crush in two different languages, in two different cultures, and in two of the most competitive markets in the world? It's just mind-boggling. I don't quite understand how it's possible. But read this NYT profile of Joe from a few years back (or his Q&A in the Wall Street Journal) or just go straight to the source and watch his set on Colbert from last week: Joe Wong


Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or come say hi at a live show. If you're reading this for the first time (maybe someone forwarded you this email?), you can subscribe here.

Happy holidays,
Chris