>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made when a man signed up for a subscription.

The year was 1790.

The man was George Washington and the subscription was to the publication of the first American theatrical comedy, Royal Tyler's.

The Contrast.

The play was first staged in 1787, and experts say it was a landmark in the emerging popular culture in the United States.

The farcical take on American values helped shape Americans ideas of themselves and their nation.

If you had to choose an example of a piece of comedy that has the same effect in modern times, what would it be?

Would it be a late night comedy show?

Maybe a Broadway show?

Would it be an infamous puffy shirt?

The initial question inspires further questions what qualifies as an important reflection of our society?

How well known does the material need to be?

Does staying power matter?

From vaudeville performers to satirists like Mark Twain to sitcoms like Seinfeld, a new book explores the way comedy shapes how we see each other, both as humans and as Americans.

It's called Funny Stuff how comedy shaped American history.

It's a collaboration between the Smithsonian and the National Comedy Center, and this hour we discuss some of the best comedy of all time and some of the most important, and also some of the most controversial, with the director of the center, Journey Journey Gunderson, who is back with us.

Journey.

It is always a pleasure.

How are you?

>> I'm well, thank you.

>> And for those watching on YouTube, you're not with us in studio, so set a little scene for us.

If they haven't been to the center.

>> Yes, I am within the National Comedy Center.

I'm in an exhibit called The Comedy Continuum.

Uh, it's a massive radar touch interface that's kind of like the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, uh, on steroids in comedy.

It's about all of the ways comedic contributors and creatives are connected via their work throughout comedy history.

>> Well, we're going to talk later this hour about some things that you have coming up, some things happening this summer.

But we're going to start with the book again.

It's funny stuff.

How Comedy Shaped American History how did this come together with you guys in the Smithsonian?

Smithsonian?

>> Well, for most of American history, comedy has been this cultural force, but never really a part of the public record, a part of the official record of history.

And we like to say that you can really understand the mood in the room about what was transpiring through its comedy.

It's how we understand ourselves.

And so this book is part of a larger effort to change that, to change that.

Comedy was really never part of the historical record on things.

And we and the Smithsonian have been talking for years about our respective collections.

And a member of the Smithsonian's team came and toured, and it was hatched there that we should collaborate on this contribution to, uh, describing our history through jokes and through comedy.

>> And the book.

We're going to kind of work through parts of the book here, because there's four main sections here.

And one thing that our team was talking about is that it's this is not a chronological history of comedy.

This is not the history of comedy.

From the first joke, it groups things thematically in comedy.

So you you might read about Amos and Andy, The Beverly Hillbillies and Tootsie in the same section.

So the sections are comedy shapes, how we see each other.

Comedy creates American identity.

Comedy provokes conversations, comedy breaks the mold.

So I want to start with how comedy shapes how we see each other.

And really, in many ways, that is for good and for ill.

The book talks about, um, for example, the, the petroleum, Vesuvius Nasby is a story of caricaturing, caricaturing a type of northerner who sympathized with the Confederacy.

The book takes on minstrel, uh, menstrual and the effect of the view of black people, Jim Crow and segregation.

So it certainly is a range.

And to me, at least from our perspective, you didn't flinch at looking at how, um, maybe the full spectrum there is that fair?

>> Yeah.

And I think as a museum, it's our job to put things into context and to speak to the generations who weren't there when it was happening so that they can understand and appreciate it.

And so, um, the petroleum, Vesuvius Nasby example reminds me so much of what someone in my age cohort might think of as The Colbert Report.

It was fiercely satirizing, uh, the Civil War by assuming the role of one's opponent.

And Abraham Lincoln took notice and started a correspondence, of course, with the writer.

And it was, uh, it was massively distributed.

You know, it actually had an impact.

And this was in the days before the airwaves could do so, so quickly.

And so it's one of my favorite places to start in just qualifying the title of the book.

That comedy has actually shaped American history through this funny stuff.

>> Um, but with blackface and minstrel, see, I think is the actual term there.

Um, in comedy, as the book notes here, this was, this had an effect on, uh, the way people in this country viewed African Americans viewed segregation.

Um, led to stereotyping about things like intelligence and characteristics.

I mean, that's, it's tough to read now, but it's an important part of history of understanding ourselves.

I think.

>> Yes, exactly.

Um, comedy reveals the best and the worst of us.

It's really one way to think of it is it's the most honest historical record there is.

Um, jokes have been the thing that allowed us to gave us permission to challenge assumptions, uh, to express what maybe everybody was thinking, but wasn't, uh, being printed in the news.

And so you can understand one's culture best by going through its comedy.

Um, you mentioned issues of race.

Uh, one of the other things that we see that tells us about ourselves is when, uh, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara are joking on Ed Sullivan, uh, about computer dating.

It's a famous sketch that they went on to perform many times, the first of which was in 1966, and merely Jerry Stiller saying his name is Hershey Horowitz gets a huge laugh from the audience as he's standing opposite Mary Elizabeth Doyle, a Catholic girl.

And so throughout the routine, you can just be put back in the time period of 1966 and understand how incredibly taboo it was to think of a Jewish man dating a Catholic girl.

And, you know, you learn something about 1966 just through watching how popular that sketch was.

>> Well, and there's here's something else I learned about what was happening around that time in that section, about how comedy shapes how we see each other.

You note about The Beverly Hillbillies that this was not the first time that so-called rubes were depicted in comedy.

What was interesting about The Beverly Hillbillies is the show revealed wisdom in their characters that some of the wealthy people around them didn't always have, and it created, um, an interesting statement.

You write in popular culture, at a time when the president's so-called war on poverty drew national media attention to disadvantaged communities throughout Appalachia and the rural South.

What do you think the story of The Beverly Hillbillies really is?

>> It's about the Delta in cultural elite, and the two coasts and the major metro areas, and again, it's just like in the, uh, vaudeville era where we look at comedy as a way of reckoning and reconciling an assimilationist experience.

You have a melting pot of cultures, whether it's city and country, whether it's major metro areas, and how they think about the rural areas and Appalachia.

Um, but, or whether it's immigrant populations trying to coexist, the comedy is always a way of processing that.

And if you can process something through laughter, uh, you can find connection and common ground.

>> I want to ask you about Don Rickles as well, because the book has a section on Don Rickles as an equal opportunity offender.

And, uh, according to the book, that Rickles style would inspire not just other stand up comedians, but also shock jocks and increasingly, politicians.

But I, I tend to wonder Journey, if they're all learning the correct lesson from Don Rickles, I don't know.

Um, there's a lot of imitators, but maybe only one Don Rickles.

How do you feel about his legacy?

>> Um, I think.

>> The fact that Don Rickles left a legacy, that it was an honor, uh, and that it was the sincerest form of love and flattery to be viciously roasted, uh, is a really important lesson that we can all take away.

If you can laugh at yourself, if you can take a punch, uh, you're going to be better for it.

And you're going to be able to get along with others and see yourself in a more thoughtful way.

And I think that's what Rickles was teaching us is that, uh, if we can all get in a room together and jab at what people are otherwise afraid to say publicly and come out hugging and as friends, then, you know, we're going to be a culture that stays connected.

One of the things I know we've talked about on this program is that as people consume content in silos, you can see that we are becoming more polarized.

And so these essays are largely talking about comedy that had, uh, a massive following or a massive impression or many, many people consumed it.

In the case of your Show of Shows and Sid Caesar, it's 60 million viewers, which no one is achieving today.

And so the way comedy was forceful and powerful in getting us to stay together as a culture is something that is increasingly being lost.

And I hope that's another takeaway of this book, that if we can laugh together, even from different sides of the aisle, uh, we perhaps have have some hope.

>> I want to ask you about one other aspect of this section of the book on how we see each other.

And there's a little bit of a contrast in my mind.

This book at times is highlighting works of comedy comedy in different forms that are are going to have a lot of staying power and, and might feel timeless no matter when a joke is told or a scene is remembered.

But then there are certain shows or moments where if you just show them.

Today, for example, to my 14 year old, he'd be like, I don't get this Ellen show.

Like, I don't get Will and Grace.

Why did they have to make it?

Why was it a thing for Ellen?

Like, why was it a national story that someone was gay in a comedy show?

Well, as the book notes at the time, Ellen comes out on on camera.

And then I think I think the book mentioned a year later was having trouble finding work after that.

That's hard to probably believe now, for a lot of younger people who didn't live through that.

And the book also notes that Joe Biden mentioned in 2012 that it was Will and Grace that might have what did he say, might have done, might have done more to educate the American public than anything anybody has done so far about equal marriage.

So, you know, those shows might not last the same way in a time capsule, but they're really important artifacts.

Is it strange to go back and watch certain episodes now in 2026?

Journey given the context that we know, or do we always are we always sort of infected by the the moment that we think we're applying our standards to a time in the past?

>> Mhm.

Well, first.

>> Comedy is a vehicle singularly well suited to deliver things that are making people uncomfortable or address what's taboo.

And the Ellen example is a great one.

Um, I think that one of the things that we learned from Will and Grace and Ellen, that people these days don't appreciate is where this battle took place.

And one of the things people talk about in the feminist movement is not, is not taking for granted the progress that's been made.

And Ellen is not that far in the rearview mirror.

If you look even further in the rearview mirror on that topic of women in comedy and sexuality, uh, also in the book is Rusty Warren, who had seven gold records, most famous of which is Knockers Up.

Um, we talked about cancel culture last time I was here at the peak of her career at a time post vaudeville and comedy club when the supper club circuit was the place to be.

Uh, she was kind of deemed inappropriate at a certain point.

And, uh, her career, she wasn't deemed suitable for radio or television.

And we have some of the sheet music from the original song knockers up in the museum.

But people ask, well, why haven't I ever heard of her?

And one of the, uh, pieces of speculation about why Rusty Warren kind of got erased at a certain point were rumors about her sexuality.

And she was a woman who was already in her on stage persona joking about her sexuality in ways that made people uncomfortable.

And then when it was suspected that her off stage persona didn't match that comedy because of how she identified, uh, that kind of ended her career.

>> Yeah.

I mean, again, such great history and lessons there.

I'm hung up a little bit about something.

I'm jumping ahead to the, the short section you have on the The Golden Girls, because the Golden Girls, as much as it's beloved for Blanche, you know, being the Blanche character was being the lovable ditz and Bea Arthur and this, you know, the mom who will say anything, the Golden Girls as a show addressed a number of really sometimes difficult topics, including, uh, gay culture and homosexuality pretty, pretty far in advance of Ellen and Will and Grace and going back now Journey and seeing some of those episodes where I think it was Blanche was producer.

Megan Mack was Blanche did Blanche have a gay brother in Golden Girls?

Is that what happened?

I'm trying to remember.

Okay, so, you know, that's a big deal.

That's probably in the late 80s, early 90s latest, and they put it right in the show.

And frankly, what Blanche says is very loving and very defensive and nurturing.

It wasn't just played for laughs, it wasn't just a punchline, but it still takes time.

So it to your point about comedy being this interesting vehicle, it is really interesting in that way, but it's not like a perfect straight line of what anybody would call progress.

I mean, comedy is sometimes reflective of the moment.

If, if I showed my son, uh, Ellen, Will and Grace and that Golden Girls episode, you know, he might feel like The Golden Girls won was the last of the group, but it was the first of the group.

So I just, I'm kind of musing on how it's not always a straight line.

>> And I think that's.

>> Because our progress is not always a straight line, right?

Like often it's, uh, two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back.

That is reflected in our entertainment and in our comedy, because it never is quite, uh, a straight line.

Joan Rivers We have 67,000 joke notes of hers spanning the 1950s through 2014.

And she was well known as the earliest, uh, stand up to be joking about abortion at a time when you couldn't use the word abortion in polite company.

Um, but she would argue that getting people talking about it was one way to help shine light on an issue that was plaguing women and that deserved attention.

As uncomfortable as it was.

And so there again, you have comedy at the forefront of every progressive social change movement in this country.

And to your point, it's not a straight line.

>> How do you think Carol Burnett shaped ideas about women in American society?

>> I think for one, Carol Burnett, along with Lucille Ball, made it okay to be on screen.

Uh, for being funny and not just for being attractive.

The vast majority of inclusion of women in entertainment is as a sex symbol and an object of desire.

And so to be funny is to be powerful.

You can take back the power in a room if you're the one that can make it laugh.

And so every time there's a woman, uh, whether it's Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball or one of my favorite essays in the book is about Lily Tomlin on Laugh-In.

Every time a woman does that, it's, uh, through comedy, claiming some power.

And I would say in the case of Lily Tomlin, what I find interesting is the popularity of her characters on Laugh-In and George Schlatter really introduced American audiences to Lily by believing in her characters when she described no other, uh, agent or manager who's or producer whose office she was walking into was finding her characters funny.

Uh, he puts her on Laugh-In.

She's depicting the characters, uh, like Ernestine, the phone operator.

But if you look at what she does after that, once she has the power of being a known icon in comedy and people wanting to see her and wanting to listen to her, she comes out with profoundly progressive specials in the 1970s, full length specials, uh, Lily being one of them.

And I don't think you can do that without that foundation.

>> I'm going to hold the book up so people can see what we're talking about here.

So if you're watching on YouTube, this is the book.

It's it's called Funny Stuff How Comedy Shaped American History, and it is from the National Comedy Center and the Smithsonian.

And, uh, one of our guest this hour.

Well, she didn't write the whole book, but she seems to know every page of it.

Journey Gunderson.

Uh, the really remarkable guest who has been on a number of times now from the Comedy Center down in Jamestown.

Um, you know, we've, we've talked to Journey about the challenge of bringing the world to Jamestown, and I've got family right there in Jamestown.

I'm so glad you're doing it.

So before we get back to the book, just briefly update people on how things are going at the Comedy Center.

>> It's great.

Since I was last with you, we were named the best pop culture Museum in the country by USA today.

Uh, you heard me mention Stiller and Meara in the context of the book, but also, since I was last with you, we announced a major, uh, archive acquisition, which is the, uh, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara Archives gifted to us by Ben Stiller.

And, uh, you know, that's an extraordinary legacy in comedy and a great example of one that, uh, without a museum like this risks being forgotten.

Uh, preservation doesn't happen passively.

You have to choose to preserve things.

And again, to your point about things being so temporal, because comedy is so immediate and so immediately responsive, it's also fleeting.

And the most vulnerable when we think about preservation and conservation.

And so our whole existence as a museum, as a national archive that didn't exist until now, uh, and in doing this book is to remedy that.

Uh, the other major acquisition announcement we just made a few weeks ago is, of course, that of the archive of Mel Brooks.

Uh, Mel has placed his entire career archive with us here in Jamestown, and that allows us to talk about, uh, so many things in our comedy consciousness.

Of course, his films, but things like the 2000 Year Old man in partnership with Carl Reiner, where it was improv on stage or in albums.

Um, we have in that archive.

Unbelievably, his earliest comedy notebook at the age of 18, he's in World War Two, and he's raising morale of fellow troops.

And you have a handwritten 18 year old Mel Brooks little joke notebook, because he knew he had to raise morale and do what he could.

Uh, facing the atrocities of war.

And so it allows us this archive to kind of chart the, uh, the course of a guy that changes American history and shows us that comedy is a powerful tool tool, not just for being cathartic and soothing us in a post-World War Two era, but that it's powerful in satirizing the very horrors and atrocities of war that otherwise people, you know are thinking, should we not even talk about this?

So the handwritten lyrics to springtime for Hitler, uh, being on display in the national archive is significant in showing exactly what you can choose to do with comedy, in wielding it.

>> Mel Brooks archive comprises nearly 150 000 creative and production documents, over 5000 photographs.

But I think those 18 year old comedy notes in World War Two that is amazing.

Was there did somebody tell you that it was coming to like, did his team say, by the way, you're getting this or did you guys like discover that when you're going through the archive?

>> Uh, mostly the former, mostly the former because it's a big process.

It is 150,000 documents, more than 5000 photographs, many of which have never been seen.

And it's a really personal experience to be going through it with Mel and his team.

What's unique about this particular partnership and acquisition is that so often we have made acquisitions after an artist is no longer with us.

So it's an archivist and a storyteller and a curator's dream to be able to ask questions of the subject at the heart of the materials.

And, uh, you know, I don't know that it gets more significant than that when it comes to a living legend in comedy.

>> He's going to be 100 turning 100, I think.

Mel Brooks, is that right?

Do you know?

Yeah.

This month turning 100.

And I saw just a brief teaser from him on the new Spaceballs movie, which is a year away.

And the joke that they thought about calling it Spaceballs two, the search for more money.

But, uh, you know, I think they're just calling it the next one, but no, what an amazing.

Go ahead.

Journey.

>> Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because in reflecting on his work, you know, some people might casually think, oh, it's silly and it's fun, but, uh, Spaceballs was kind of satirizing commercialism.

Blazing saddles is satirizing racism.

And one of the things that's in the archive is an original cover to that script called Black Bart.

That was the original working title.

Um, another version of Spaceballs script is titled Planet Moron on the cover, and someone asked me if there are, you know, is there a Spaceballs script or is there a blazing saddle script in the archive?

And the answer is, there are many.

There are dozens of each, which also pulls back the curtain on the level of precision and honing and iteration that goes into making great comedy.

Um, when it comes to things like the history of the world, part one, that was Mel, uh, teaching, offering a masterclass on, uh, sat fearlessly satirizing abuses of power.

Um, when you look at the musical numbers on the Spanish Inquisition, for example, uh, you go, this guy is not afraid of any topic, and he's going to teach us something about ourselves.

>> Well, on the subject of all of the honing that goes into the craft, I want to listen to a clip that we have of Jerry Seinfeld talking to Graham Bensinger.

Uh, Graham has his own interview series.

He does a great job.

And this was two years ago on the eve of the release of Jerry Seinfeld's movie Unfrosted.

And they were talking about how Jerry Seinfeld views the process of creating a great or even complete bit, a set of a tight five.

I want to listen to what he says.

>> I had this amazing bit about weddings.

It was like, uh, it was fantastic.

It was so long.

I covered everything.

It was a great bit, and I worked on it and worked on it.

And I love developing and polishing every little detail of a bit.

So it takes me forever.

Sometimes years, years.

Um, I was talking to Chris Rock yesterday and he was telling me about his last special.

He said, I had three jokes in there that I've worked on for over ten years, and people don't understand that about comedy.

How could what could take ten years, you know?

But it can if you're obsessive and perfectionist.

Um, so anyway, so I do the, I start into the bit and somebody yells, heard it, you know, and that was, that was a tough one.

I still think about it.

Really.

Yeah.

It was like, uh, it was mean.

It was true.

But, you know, I think now audiences are a little more sophisticated that yeah, these are, these are pieces that we work on for months and months and months.

You don't do it once and it works, you know, um, every scene you see in a movie, they did that 18 times.

That was the one time it was good.

That's what's in the movie.

You don't see the other 17.

Same with comedy.

I've done this bit a hundred times and now I've got it right.

>> Journey I think that just lines up with what you're describing on.

Is there a baseball script?

Well, there's multiple is there a script on another movie?

Well, there's multiple the honing is what the public doesn't always see, but it's.

I think it's fascinating to kind of peel back the onion and hear a master at his craft talking about how he does it.

What do you hear there?

>> Exactly.

I hear that, um, nobody gets it right on the first try, as Margaret Cho says in our museum, this comedy can't be practiced in front of the mirror.

So we talk about the importance of live venues and comedy clubs as the gym.

It's absolutely true.

Even if you're Jerry Seinfeld, you are pruning a bit and you're making it better, and you don't get to decide.

That's another great quote I hear comedians say a lot is you don't get to decide what's funny.

The audience tells you what's funny.

And so you have to keep honing that bit in response to them.

Um, and, but in listening to that, I also can't help but think about examples of the flip side in comedy creation that I find astounding.

Uh, one of them that comes out that the Mel Brooks archive reminds us of when you look at the papers from the sketch show, Your show of shows.

So after World War Two and the Catskills, Mel meets Carl Reiner as they are working on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows.

For context, if you know Saturday Night Live and other sketch shows, your Show of Shows was 90 minutes live weekly, 39 weeks a year.

Nobody touches that today.

And they didn't get to hone and they didn't get to perfect.

They were going on live in front of 60 million viewers.

And in the documentary about Mel, you get the sense that almost killed him in terms of the anxiety of that pace.

Um, but another of my favorite examples of that in comedy and in this book and in our museum, uh, where you don't get to hone is, uh, Mark Russell.

We have his bow tie in the museum.

He was known for his iconic bow tie and sitting at his piano.

But, and of course, we're here on public media.

Uh, so a public media hero and comedy Mark Russell did, uh, specials at a pace of six times a year.

So, you know, nobody even touches that now with their Netflix specials.

No one's doing six hours a year that are new.

Uh, and he did that from 1975 to 2004.

So that's just an incredible pace in terms of churning out great specials and great comedy.

And it's our job, again, to provide that context.

You go, wow, Mark Russell was fantastic.

But if you don't look at the pace at which things were being churned out, it's hard to appreciate just how fantastic he was.

>> Well, because Seinfeld in that clip with Graham Bensinger, talked about all his work to hone a bit on weddings.

I decided I got to grab a minute of that just so we can hear a little bit of that.

This is Jerry Seinfeld talking about weddings.

>> The idea of marriage was not as disturbing to me as the idea of the wedding.

I don't really like weddings.

We had a very small wedding.

We had like 20 people, little dinner, drinks, glasses, clink.

Congratulations.

Good night.

Click click click.

I'm sure there are couples here tonight.

Do not woo or say anything.

There's always an engaged couple in any crowd.

Please, just keep it to yourself.

Because I have to talk to you privately.

No one needs to know that we are communicating about this.

But there is something about your wedding that your family will not tell you.

Your friends, your closest, dearest friends.

They will not tell you either.

I might be the only person you know that can tell you the complete, straight up, honest truth, which is this nobody wants to go to your wedding.

We're not excited about it.

Most of us are getting these invitations and going, oh, Jesus Christ, it's on a Saturday.

>> Okay, so here's why I wanted to share this with you.

Uh, you know, I do think it's a great I do think it's a great bit on weddings.

Um, but Seinfeld is someone who clearly is going to have staying power.

And in the book, there's a lot of, you know, discussion on why certain things have power, why comedy has power, and what we've been talking about in this first half hour Journey is the stuff that, you know, the truth telling about ourselves.

Sometimes the hard truth.

Sometimes it reveals a darker side of ourselves.

But comedy has that light that it can shine.

Jerry Seinfeld, for his show, didn't want hugging or lessons.

He didn't want a full house feel.

And in his comedy, I think he probably is telling the truth there.

But it's not a profound truth that's deep in our bones.

But why does he have the staying power that so many others maybe don't quite have?

>> Probably for exactly the reason you just mentioned that sometimes comedy is an elixir.

Sometimes comedy's role isn't to be at the forefront of a progressive social change movement.

Sometimes it's just to make us laugh.

And if you listen to Jerry talk about comedy, he's always been a purist that it's just.

It's.

He also disseminates it into fewest words possible.

And his only goal is making us laugh.

He does not necessarily have an agenda in those jokes.

And, uh, that reminds me of another thing that Mel Brooks says about comedy in the foreword to the book, which is that it's fundamental to American survival.

It's what got us through the Great Depression.

So sometimes comedy is social commentary on really difficult issues.

Other times it's just what's giving us the will to live and knowing that the smallest smirk is like a glimmer on the horizon after going through something difficult, that there's hope and that you can recover.

And laughter teaches us that.

And it teaches us that so well, because we don't get to choose when we laugh, even ourselves.

It's an involuntary response, and it's completely organic and natural.

And sometimes that's really what gets us through the hardest times.

>> I think it's really wise to kind of observe how ardent Seinfeld has been about, um, you know, you talk about cancel culture, but also it is not a political agenda.

He wants to find universal truths.

He wants to make you laugh.

He's not asking you about your politics.

He doesn't expect you to ask about his.

And maybe on the flip side of that is Vince Vaughn recently sat down with Theo Von on his podcast, and Vince Vaughn.

Vaughn was really critical of where late night shows have gone.

He said that, you know, nobody really thought about Johnny Carson's politics, and that's part of what made him beloved.

And now he says, you know, yeah, there's the there's the Kimmel attempted cancellation by the White House.

But Kimmel is very political.

Colbert became very political.

And Vince Vaughn doesn't like that.

He thinks people don't like it either.

I want to I don't want to ask you to sort of adjudicate that.

I mean, part of what I think you do so well, I am such an admirer of what you do.

Journey, because, um, I think you are doing a phenomenal.

You and your team are doing a phenomenal job of collating the history of comedy and giving us mirrors and lights and giving us great access to materials.

So I'm not going to ask you to adjudicate this sort of argument, but I want to ask you, when it comes to where the late night scene has gone, if you are surprised, given the contrast that Vaughn sees between a Carson versus a Colbert and Kimmel, or if you think, look, that's just a product of a very fragmented media, like it's a very different media today than it was when Johnny Carson was on the scene.

>> Comedy is it's best when it's authentic.

And so I think every late night host is at one's best when they are making jokes that exude what they're feeling and their own authenticity.

And comedy also, uh, is about observations of everyday life.

And so you can't really parse and separate saying that politics is not part of everyday life.

I think for the late night hosts who have gotten political, they probably feel they don't get to choose.

This is what is everyday life at this point.

If you're reading the news and paying attention.

And so they're going to make jokes about it, and people like to try to do this thing.

And I've heard actually Jerry Seinfeld kind of, uh, reject it as a conversation this, well, what would Carson be doing if he were here today?

And he's like, it's a false premise.

It's not the same thing.

He's not here today.

And there is no point in making that comparison.

Um, I'm sure many would say that what's going on in politics is different than maybe what was going on in Carson's era.

You also have more room for, uh, an authentic point of view when you have fractured viewing, right?

Like Carson, I think, assumed the role of a person that was speaking to the entirety of a nation.

And his ratings show that.

And that's how television worked at that point.

Mhm.

But now people kind of find their tribes and they gravitate toward comedy.

That speaks to what they're feeling and makes them feel less crazy.

And I think that's what you see in late night today is people just, um, being at their best because they're authentic.

Jay Leno commented on it, maybe similarly to Vaughn, but if it wasn't part of Leno's authentic comedic voice to be political, then fine.

I think everybody has the right to do the jokes that mean the most to them.

And Jim Gaffigan said in our opening exhibit at the National Comedy Center, uh, once I found my own point of view is when I got really good as a comedian.

>> Mhm.

Okay, briefly here before we go to our only break here.

You got anything coming up with Jerry Seinfeld?

>> Yes.

As a matter of fact, I'm glad you mentioned that Jerry Seinfeld will be performing in Jamestown, New York, at the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival here at the National Comedy Center.

Uh, on August 6th, which happens to be Lucille Ball's birthday.

Uh, and the festival runs August 6th through the ninth.

We also have Bert Kreischer coming to perform and Seth Meyers, uh, the Friday night of the festival is one of my favorite shows.

It's the stand up showcase where we bring in the best club talent from coast to coast.

So if you are in the region, if you're in Rochester, if you're in upstate New York, you can come to Jamestown that weekend and get an experience you can otherwise only obtain by going to the store in LA, the seller in New York, the improv, um, not to mention these, you know, arena level headliners, some of the best to play the game.

>> Incredible group there.

Uh, Seinfeld sold out.

>> Uh, I think a few it is sold out.

No, a few single seats do remain.

Whoa.

So if you haven't gotten your tickets, you can probably find something on the seating map.

Although it is getting close to sellout.

Um, Bert Kreischer is doing two shows on a Saturday night, so you can find that, um, Jerry's is on a Thursday and all the tickets are available at comedy center.org.

Another really neat event, uh, is that Carol Leifer is coming to town.

Carol Leifer has been ever present in some of the greatest comedy shows as a writer in the writers room.

Um, whether it's hacks, whether it's Curb Your Enthusiasm or writing for many of the award shows, the Oscars and the Emmys.

Um, friends with Jerry Seinfeld and just, uh, rumored to also have been, uh, one who informed the character of Elaine on Seinfeld.

So Carol Leifer is a legend in her own right.

She'll be here doing a Q&A during the festival on the Thursday, August 6th afternoon.

So check it all out on the schedule at Comedy center.org.

And come check out the museum that was just named Best Pop Culture Museum in the country.

>> All right, as we go to break, I'll just say the the people that I talked to who have been there recently are amazed that every time they go, they see something new.

They just love going there.

It's the National Comedy Center in Jamestown.

Journey Gunderson is the executive director.

We'll come back.

We'll close the hour talking more about this remarkable new book that the center helped put out.

That's next on Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Tuesday on the next Connections, Antiques Roadshow is coming to the Genesee Country Village and Museum on Wednesday.

WXXI is partnering.

It's a huge event and it is sold out.

I'm sorry to say.

However, we've got the team from Antiques Roadshow on Connections on Tuesday.

Looking forward to a conversation and a big week in public media.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson someone shared with me recently.

Journey Gunderson a clip from.

I think it is from Life's Too Short, which is a British mockumentary from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

And in the only clip I've ever seen, Liam Neeson is playing himself.

But he sits down at a table with the guys and he wants to do improv, and they're like, we don't have time.

And he insists they're going to do improv, and he is dead set on improving as a patient who has Aids, and they try to tell him like, this is a little heavy.

Like, let's not.

Stephen Merchant's going like, that is not a great bit.

The premise for comedy, and they finally convinced him.

How about you be a green grocer?

And Ricky Gervais is coming to see you because he didn't like the produce he got from me.

Liam Neeson says, okay, and Ricky Gervais says, you know, I'm here to return this broccoli.

And Liam Neeson basically says, I didn't sell it to you.

I was gone yesterday.

I was at the doctor because I've got full blown Aids.

And he can't they can't get him off it.

And they're going like, you can't do comedy about this.

It had me wondering, are there actually subjects that you just can't do comedy about?

Journey Gunderson.

>> Everything we see says, no, there are not topics that are off limits.

It can be debated whether it's too far or whether it's too soon.

Uh, there's an exhibit called Too Soon in the Blue Room.

And, uh, I think it's Elayne Boosler who says, if it's funny, if you write a joke, that's funny.

I will go anywhere with you.

But if it's not funny, that's a that's a risky place to go.

Uh, yeah, I won't cite it, but Larry David's SNL monologue comes to mind as, uh, an example of him probably testing the boundaries of what he could get away with as long as it was funny.

And so everything we've seen tells us, no, it's there's, and it's also so temporal, you know, part of the stories we tell here is about the, the history of what's considered off limits or too far or taboo throughout our culture.

And it changes fast.

You know, the fact that Lucille Ball was pregnant as Ricky Ricardo as Lucy Ricardo, and they couldn't use the word pregnant on the show.

And it was controversial whether to even depict her during her pregnancy tells you what you need to know about, uh, the ever changing and evolving trajectory of what's too far too soon or, uh, off limits.

>> Greg emails to say, Evan, everything that you and your guests have talked about while perhaps being true, speaks to the fact that you are stuck in the past here.

You're not talking about anybody in comedy who's working today.

Are there any good shows or comedians on the scene today?

Greg is skeptical.

Greg thinks your book is ancient history now.

Journey Gunderson.

It's called Funny Stuff here How Comedy Shaped American History.

But Greg says you're talking about a lot of stuff that's decades old now, so go ahead.

Journey Gunderson is there any good comedy on >> The.

>> Scene today?

>> Sure.

In fact, one of the essays in the book is about, uh, Ali Wong's baby cobra dress.

And so apropos.

We were just talking about how Lucille Ball couldn't be pregnant on television when she was pregnant.

Ali Wong did some, uh, specials covering all kinds of content that people would have thought, uh, and still do is explicit or, uh, pushing boundaries while pregnant.

And so she's featured in the book.

Um, Margaret Cho and others, uh, I think there's a lot of great comedy now.

And I don't think that anything about this museum is stuck in the past.

Um, one of the things that Amy Poehler said when she joined our advisory board, I said, what made you say yes to this and what makes you believe in it?

And she said, it's that this is not a museum that alienates people by walking through galleries only of people from the past.

It's a museum that feels like it belongs to everyone right now.

And she was walking past a display case with materials from Mindy Kaling's show, Never Have I ever, and high school groups.

You know, that's when the cameras come out.

That's when they get excited about things.

But maybe they walked right past George Carlin's joke notes.

So we've been and there's Ali Wong behind me.

We've done a really intentional job of keeping our finger on the pulse of comedy.

Um, because I think it's, you can all you can better appreciate the history if you are juxtaposing it with the present, because these, uh, those are the shoulders on which the new artists stand.

And you can appreciate what Ali Wong is doing or Amy Schumer is doing, or Nikki Glaser is doing.

Uh, and when you look at what Rusty Warren did to pave the way.

So, uh, yes, your listener is correct.

We focused a lot in the rear view mirror in this conversation, but the book does anything, but.

>> There's so many stories in the book, too, that give you more of the full picture of someone in comedy, a story about someone like Joan Rivers.

This is I mean, I don't know the Joan Molinsky story here, but I it's just one example to me Journey of a book that is absolutely.

There's no way anybody's going to pick up this book and say, yeah, I knew all this stuff.

I already knew all of this stuff.

Um, you want to just tell us a little bit the story of Joan Molinsky and Joan Rivers?

>> Um, Joan Rivers is a person who, uh, actually, I should back up the.

There are more than 300 artifacts in this book.

The essays were written by, uh, various people from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Comedy Center.

Uh, they were edited mainly by Dr.

Laura Laplaca, our vice president of archives.

And, uh, Ryan Lintelman from the Smithsonian.

And it's, uh, it's a book that I don't think anyone can read without saying, uh, wow.

I learned something.

>> I'm reading some of the, the notes that the jokes on cards from Joan Rivers on Growing Older.

She says, I'm getting old.

My birth control pills are prune flavored.

And on the subject of can We talk?

I think it was on my honeymoon that I developed the line, can we talk?

Um, I just love the fact that you guys can, uh, that you guys can collect actual jokes and process notes.

You know, Seinfeld was talking about sometimes it's one word that will take years to get.

Chris Rock was saying the same thing.

Do you think there is a there's almost a lyricism or a musicality to comedy, or even like a poetry to comedy in terms of the beats of a line, the syllables in a joke.

>> Yes, absolutely.

Uh, many, so many comedians, uh, have been drummers, for example, Jon Stewart among them.

I went to an event during Netflix is a Joke festival, and it was the night of Too Many Stars, presented by Rob and Michelle Smigel.

And if you don't know about, uh, Smigel, look him up because he's had his hands in some of the greatest comedy in our consciousness today.

But the show opened with, uh, Jimmy Kimmel on, uh, sax clarinet, uh, Jon Stewart on drums and Conan on guitar.

And they sounded pretty good doing a White Stripes song.

And they came out and they were dubbed a band called The Very White Stripes.

Um, but it did make me think about how understanding rhythms and cadence is absolutely successful.

Comedy is a key to successful comedy.

>> I love it when, when a joke gets in your head, and often it's because of how perfectly told it is, how the timing just can stay with you.

Just probably for, uh, probably elevates the joke beyond just what it is on paper.

Jen writes to say, I haven't seen Blazing Saddles that you and your guests talked about, but I've heard it is a very racist movie.

Can your guest comment on that now?

You said Journey.

Yeah, that it was meant to.

Well go ahead.

Uh, Jen wants to.

>> Know.

>> Is it racist?

>> So yeah, I'm so glad your listener asked this because we were we've just been talking about this, um, Mel Brooks was actually among the first to point out the ridiculousness of racism.

So that is a massively important distinction when you think when you, uh, hear that it was a racist movie, you have to a think about the time period in which it came out.

And B, ask yourself, who is the butt of the joke?

And throughout that film, what Mel is doing is pointing out the ridiculousness and the prevalence of racism.

And that's just a really important distinction to make when it's easy in 2026 to ask, does this hold up?

And is this okay?

>> Is that the standard you'd give to something like family Guy?

I mean, I think I'm trying to remember, I think Seth MacFarlane has said we wouldn't include a joke unless we could defend it in terms of some kind of explanation like what you just described.

I think that's what he has said.

Is that how you feel about something like family Guy?

>> Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, you even see that in network television, like The Office, you know, they're depicting what are HR incidents?

And Michael Scott is playing the bumbling, oblivious and offensive, uh, guy in charge.

And so the fact that he is the butt of the joke in those scenes is key.

It's really key to think about intent with a joke.

And I think, you know, again, rather than all of our comedy, pretend that there isn't bigotry and isn't sexism and isn't racism.

Uh, sometimes it takes a nuance to appreciate what you're seeing, but you have to think about, uh, the fact that it's pulling back the curtain and shining a light on something that's going on anyway.

And if we can, uh, laugh at those who are the perpetrators of it, um, that's important.

And often to depict a perpetrator of anything, including racism, you have to show some racism happening, uh, to depict the lesson.

>> All right.

As we close here, where do you want people to pick up this book?

Journey.

>> You can get it by going to comedy center.org.

You can get it in the gift shop here at the National Comedy Center.

It's also available from, uh, most of the major retailers online.

But if you want to support a nonprofit 501 C three, uh, then you can get it from the National Comedy Center.

>> And online.

Where are you?

Once again, the website.

>> Comedy center.org.

>> Now, listen, journey's been on a couple of times here, and we're pretty effusive in our praise for the Comedy Center, but it is well earned.

I've been there myself, and I wouldn't be saying such nice things if I didn't think it was important because, um, this is a really, really remarkable thing to have in our region.

And Journey, you guys are working really, really hard.

The book's awesome.

Thank you for the work that you're doing.

Have fun with it.

And you know, there's always something in comedy, contrary to Greg's email that is current and in the headlines.

And we're going to ask you back soon, and I look forward to our next conversation.

>> Okay.

Thanks for having me.

>> Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center.

Funny stuff is the book How Comedy Shaped American History.

It's from the Comedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution from all of us at Connections.

Thanks for being with us on our various platforms.

Wherever you're finding us.

We got a big week here.

We're going to see some people live.

If you've got tickets to the sold out Antiques Roadshow on Wednesday down at Genesee Village.

But if you don't, we're going to have some of the team tomorrow on this program, and we look forward to talking to you then.

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