Episodes
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âMy mom has a very dark sense of humor. I think thatâs how I learned how to recycle pain.â
Hari Kondabolu is not your average stand-up comedian. He has a Masters in Human Rights and worked as an immigrants rights organizer â all of which you hear in his writing. His jokes simultaneously bring about discomfort and a nod of the head, without sounding preachy. He uses comedy as a coping mechanism for addressing complex issues of race, identity, and ethnicity post 9/11.
Visit onbeing.com/series/creating-our-own-lives for other episodes and more.
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âI cannot tell you how many times laughter has connected me with all different kinds of people throughout the country, of all kinds of political persuasions.â
When politics and comedy mix they can become mean, sarcastic, and divisive. Reporter and NPR Politics Podcast co-host Sam Sanders thoughtfully avoids this. As an African American and Pentecostal growing up near a military base in San Antonio, he was surrounded by people from different class, political, and cultural backgrounds. This helped him develop his thoughtful voice, his objectivity, and his ability to connect to others through jokes and laughter.
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âI donât think that humor is evasive at all. Itâs how we protect our hearts from just bleeding to death.â
Bestselling author Terry McMillan knows how to write funny yet complex female characters: Savannah in Waiting to Exhale, Stella in Stellaâs Got Her Groove Back, and Georgia in her latest novel, I Almost Forgot About You. Whether theyâre wrestling with heartbreak, grief, or loneliness, these women use humor to face whatever life throws at them. But these characters are simply taking the lead from their creator, who sees humor as a way of âprotect[ing] our hearts from just bleeding to death.â
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âHumor is always about âas if.â And it just relaxes everybody. Weâre going to laugh.â
Transparent creator Jill Soloway describes Amichai Lau-Lavie as âa God-optional, patriarchy-toppling, Jewish modern mind.â He uses humor to connect â to himself and others, his family, his sexual identity, and his spiritual life. The rabbi says the Jewish people have endured because of their ability to laugh at themselves and, in this way, laugh at the world.
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âWhat makes humor is pattern recognition. Finance is very helpful on that front because there are a lot of patterns that keep repeating themselves.â
Heidi N. Moore uses humor as a tool for understanding the world of finance. She tells stories about the people behind the money â why they do what they do and how they do it, and has done so for many years as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Marketplace. By humanizing something as intimidating as finance, she helps people actually understand it.
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âHumor reminds me a lot of magic, in that thereâs no way to quite replicate it. Thereâs a power to thatâ
The humor in Daniel JosĂ© Olderâs writing makes his characters come alive. Whether in the playful banter of books like Shadowshaper, in his spiritual practice of LucumĂ, or alchemizing tragedy into comedy as a paramedic in New York City, he sees humor as key to finding a storytelling voice.
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âHumor gives me release. Sometimes thereâs just too much tension and you have to let it go. Laughter is such a great natural physical response to do that.â
Humor has been a tool for success for Alexis Wilkinson, and not just a tool for survival. She writes for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and previously wrote for VEEP, a job that she got right out of college, at the age of 22. And, before that, she made headlines as the first African-American woman to be president of Harvard Lampoon magazine.
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âHumor establishes new ground for parents and kids to relate on that isnât just parent-kid.â
For Maureen Craig, humor is central to how she understands and relates to her family. As a parent, a wife, a daughter, and a brand strategy executive, she believes that thereâs always something you can make a joke about.
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âI use humor as a way to let our community know that weâre not invisible, at least not to us.â
Chicano cartoonist and writer Lalo Alcaraz explores his dual identity by creating characters and places where he can be seen. Heâs known as a writer for the Fox sitcom Bordertown and for La Cucaracha, the first nationally syndicated, politically themed, Latino daily comic strip. Humor as a tool for survival is embodied in his very being.
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âWhen you are helpless with true laughter, itâs like orgasm. Your body gets taken over. If it didnât feel so good, youâd think there was something wrong.â
Sex scientist, researcher, and romance novelist Emily Nagoski sees humor as a way to understand and appreciate sex and our bodies. She says that belly laughs and rough housing play completely shift our physiology. This is what makes her romance characters so relatable â thereâs laughter in their foreplay and sex.
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âWhen everything feels horrible, what tiny detail can we seize on and laugh about.â
Writer Lindy West talks about being fat and being a feminist with an honesty and vulnerability infused with humor. Titles of her essays and books â âMy wedding was perfect â and I was fat as hell the whole timeâ or Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman â get at both the laughter and pain of her journey to body positivity, with poignant insights into the destructive power of comedy.
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âThe real Book of Mormon is on my shelf, and next to it, the Book of Mormon Musical. And Iâm spiritually enriched by both.â
Ask anyone who isnât a Mormon what they know about the faith â chances are, theyâll cite something they learned from South Park or The Book of Mormon. Theyâll also probably say that Mormons are the nicest people youâll ever meet. Derrick Clements has humor and infinite patience for being associated with this stereotype, and he doesnât let it undermine the thoughtfulness or depth of his faith.
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âThe best expression of humor is something that comes out of suffering and comes out of a sense of alienation.â
Margaret Cho opens difficult conversations about rape, abuse, addiction, failure, and anger through her work as a comedian and writer. Anger and humor, she says, are deeply connected. And she sees talking and joking about her pain as a way to help people heal.
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âHumor is a tool for inclusion and for making everyone realize: weâre all together on this.â
Jonny Sun has formed a devoted community of almost half a million followers on Twitter â tweeting through his alter ego, a lonely alien who views the world as an outsider, with curiosity and wonder. His tweets alternate between silly jokes and insightful, almost Zen-like, poetry. Through his words, he makes the world feel a little less lonely.
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Humor as a tool for survival. Thatâs the theme of our second season of Creating Our Own Lives. Host Lily Percy speaks with 15 different voices on the surprising ways humor shapes them and brings meaning to their lives. Including insights from writers, comedians, political and financial reporters, a sex educator and a rabbi â and starring voices like Margaret Cho, Hari Kondabolu, Terry McMillan, Sam Sanders, and Lindy West.
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âWhen Iâm running, Iâm in my body, with all of its limitations but with all of its capabilities at the same time.â Mike Stavlund is the author of âA Force of Willâ a memoir about the death of his 4-month-old son.
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âIf you watched me run, you wouldnât think I was sitting or thinking about sitting.â Justin Whitaker is a writer, a ChiRunner and a Buddhist. For Justin, running is a part of his spiritual practice.
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âWhen Iâm running, I feel like Iâm actively expressing gratitude.â Sarah Khasawinah works in the Senate to improve policies for older Americans. Her work requires focus and discipline, something that she also finds in her spiritual practice of running.
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âI began to notice that my running life and my meditating life were beginning to merge.â Roger Joslin is an Episcopal priest and the author of âRunning the Spiritual Path,â a how-to guide on running as meditation and prayer.
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âMy love for running started with me running towards my mom.â Mallary Tenoreâs mother, Robin Jo, introduced her to one of the defining practices in her life: running â which has been equal parts destructive, spiritual, and healing.
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