Free Snacks, Al Gore, and my TED Talk

What happens when I try to fit as many jokes into a TED Talk as I possibly can. Out on Monday! Plus recs for Harry Baker's Trying, Ernesto Morales' Object Solutions, and Ted Gioia on Fela Kuti.

BIG NEWS! My TED Talk about how to laugh more (and all the hilarious things that I have seen kids do over the years) is going to be released on Monday.

photo credit: Ryan Lash

I am very excited for the talk to be out in the world. It’s the culmination of many months of work (in particular with Cloe Shasha, who helped edit and shape the talk). A fun part of the TED Talk, for me, is that it’s the final home for a bunch of standup bits and jokes that I’ve loved telling for years. The general rule in standup is that you perform/hone material until you get it filmed and released broadly. So, despite the odds, TED ended up being the final spot for many of my favorite jokes. I love and find it very funny that I got to sneak so much ridiculousness onto the TED stage, which is often a very serious place.

For example, here’s a screenshot from one moment in my talk:

photo credit: Ryan Lash

Without spoiling anything, the talk contains some of my favorite moments from teaching in an elementary school, what it’s like to try and teach adults to do improv, how I got banned from LinkedIn, and how I think everyone can make themselves laugh more every day.

The full talk will be out on Monday and I would love it if you would:

1. watch the talk (EDITED TO ADD THE LINK NOW THAT IT’S LIVE)

2. share the talk with other people who you think will like it

3. hire me to give more fun talks, if you work at a company or university or run a conference

In the meantime, I’ll share a few funny moments from behind-the-scenes at the TED conference.

The conference takes place in Vancouver each year and it’s filled with all sorts of VIPs, brilliant scientists, extremely rich people, and world famous artists. In a moment that felt a little too on the nose, when I was in line to check into my hotel, the person in front of me was a NASA astronaut and the person behind me was the therapist Ester Perel.¹

I spent the week of the conference running my talk and practicing my slides over and over and over again, trying my hardest to memorize the talk and not mess up any cues. By the day of my talk, I felt pretty confident and tried to tell myself to relax and just have fun. But then I panicked when I realized that an actual person sitting in the audience would be Al Gore. “What if I make direct eye contact with Al Gore while I’m trying to make a joke about balls?” From the second I had that thought until I walked off stage at the end of my talk, my only goal was to not make eye contact with Al Gore. I think that’s likely the only time in my life I’ll be able to say that was my goal.

Finally, here’s the moment that I’ve thought about the most from the whole conference. As anyone who knows me knows, I am passionate about free snacks. In fact, I packed specifically knowing that I would likely be able to bring back a huge quantity of free fancy snacks from this conference. I brought a large, empty backpack to transport them home.

One day, in the middle of the week, I had identified that there was a fully stocked snack station on the second floor, out of the way of foot traffic, where I could fill my backpack without robbing anyone else of their chance to try free snacks as well. I even subtly asked the staff if it was ok to take some snacks home for later and they said “of course!” But I can’t imagine they had any inkling of the quantity of free food they’d just given me a license to haul across the border back to my home.

So there I was, literally sitting on the floor in front of this snack station with my backpack fully unzipped and wide open as I shoveled bags and bags of gourmet snacks inside. Mid-shoveling, a woman turned the corner, saw me, and gasped. I instinctively yelled out, “They told me I’m allowed to take the snacks!”

This very kind woman then told me that, no, she was not there to police my hoarding, but that in fact, my podcast was her favorite podcast and had been wondering if she might run into me in person. To be clear, that never happens to me. In fact, this was only the second time I’ve ever been recognized by a fan in my life. And this time, it was by a woman standing over me as I was committing a free-snack-based felony on the second floor of a Canadian convention center. It was NOT my most flattering look. As they, never meet your heroes.

But as I say, I’m still eating those snacks months later. It was worth it.

The talk comes out on Monday! Watch it and let me know if you enjoy it! If you don’t enjoy it, no need to share that information with me!

My projects and upcoming events:

LIVE IN NYC: Wrong Answers Only at Symphony Space - Thursday, September 19th at 7 p.m. Tickets are on sale for this show where an expert on cyber security gets interviewed by a panel of comics that includes me, Michael Cruz Kayne, Wyatt Cenac, and Ziwe! Details and tickets here

This week’s list

GREAT:

Harry Baker is a poet who often gets enormous audiences online for the videos where he performs his poems onstage. This particular piece, about what it means to want to be a parent but to not know if you’ll be able to have the experience, is a particularly powerful one. It struck a chord with me and I see why it’s resonated with so many others too. Trying by Harry Baker

FUNNY:

Ernesto Morales’ ongoing comedy/design/art project Object Solutions is one of my favorite things on the internet. I’ve recommended it a few times in the past, but I’m so glad that Ernesto is creating new products and putting them out there again. I think about the printer that prints new clothes out of dryer lint every time I do my laundry. This week, I was exposed to a terrifying new way to take video calls: the TalkTomb™

(For more background, here’s an older news story about another one of Ernesto’s designs: the magnifying spoon)

INTERESTING:

The music historian Ted Gioia writes about Fela Kuti’s political activism, how it influenced his music, and why millions of Nigerians took to the streets in response to Kuti’s death. I’ve always loved listening to Fela Kuti’s music but I knew almost none of the historical or political backstory. Now, I’m very curious to keep reading more. Fela Kuti in Prison (h/t Austin Kleon)

BONUS FOR PAYING SUBSCRIBERS:

Paying subscribers make Bright Spots possible! Subscribers get access to special features as well as all posts in the archive. Paying subscribers also get my undying gratitude (which never dies). It’s never too late to join them!

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Watch the TED talk on Monday, please!

Chris Duffy

This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.

---

…wait, who are you?

I'm Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, podcast host, and both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I’m currently writing a nonfiction book about humor for Doubleday.

1. I’ve spent the past ten minutes trying to come up with some joke about checking into a hotel at the same time as Ester Perel but I can’t make it work. The State of Affairs something something? OR “Are you here to check in — where should we begin?” Is that anything? I don’t think either of those are anything.