We ask almost every comedian we interview the same question: how do you write a joke? No two have given the same answer. One writes by hand and finishes on a keyboard. One scores every punchline out of five in a spreadsheet. One says creative block does not exist, and one says he cannot force a joke at all. One of the most…
Andy Kaufman died in 1984, at thirty-five. Most of the comedians we interview were children then, or not yet born. He still comes up more often than almost anyone. We ask a comedian about their influences, or about a character they play, or about losing a room, and within a few minutes we are talking about a man who read The…
A joke is a small agreement between two people who share a language, a set of references and an idea of what is normal. Take one of those away and the joke has to be built again. Over the past year we have interviewed comedians who perform in their second language, comedians who keep two separate acts for two countries, and…
Barry Katz is a talent manager and producer who has worked with Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Louis C.K., Jim Gaffigan, Dane Cook, Wanda Sykes, Jay Mohr and Bert Kreischer, many of them before anyone else would book them. A former stand-up from Massachusetts, he founded the Boston Comedy Club in New York's Greenwich Village in 1988…
How 13 Comedians Turned Their Worst Moments Into Comedy
October 4, 2026
How do comedians turn trauma into comedy? Ask one where their best material came from and you will rarely hear about a good day. Over the past few months we have interviewed dozens of stand-up comedians, and the same pattern keeps turning up: the crash, the diagnosis, the death, the breakup, the fall. Sooner or later it ends up…