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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the same way the best comedy is often a team effort, this book would never have been possible without a great many people helping us in many different ways.
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Pete never would have made it to where he is today without the guidance of his academic mentors, Barb Mellers, Phil Tetlock, and Danny Kahneman. Now that he’s made it, he’s grateful to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, particularly Marketing Division Chair Donnie Lichtenstein and Dean David Ikenberry, for the plentiful resources and assistance they’ve provided him, support that was all the more generous considering part of the project occurred while he was on sabbatical.
I, on the other hand, have had the benefit of being coached, edited, and yelled at by some of the best people in journalism. But none of it compared to what I received from Westword editor Patty Calhoun, especially in the yelling department. From her I learned the secret of magnificent obsessives, the value of seeking out people whose passion draws readers into unparalleled worlds—people like Pete.
Pete’s path and my own never would have crossed, much less taken us around the world, if not for a fortuitous string of helping hands along the way. I never would have heard of Pete if not for superhuman matchmaker Andrew Hyde. The resulting Westword story surely would have been the end of it, but Jonathan Levav kindly mentioned Pete’s work to a literary agent in New York. And that agent just happened to be Sasha Raskin at the Agency Group, who took one look at what I’d written about Pete and came up with an idea as outlandish as it was brilliant. Chris Baker at Wired helped build momentum by taking a shot on a nutty story idea pitched by an unknown freelancer, Susan Davis and Andrew Hartman walked two neophytes through all the legalese, and Adam Cayton-Holland came up with the perfect long-shot conclusion. Dominick Anfuso’s enthusiasm helped seal the deal with Simon & Schuster. And we’re grateful to Amy Gibb for helping us figure out how to get that deal done without going broke.
To pull off our global adventure, we are indebted to a small army of good Samaritans who connected us with just the right people and opened (if not barged through) just the right doors. In Los Angeles and elsewhere, no one worked harder to gain us entry to the world of comedy than Alonzo Bodden, though several others came close, most notably Dan Altmann, Geoff Plitt, Kevin Goetz, Gary Stiffelman, Ryan Kartels, A. J. Jacobs, Sarah Klegman, Judi Brown-Marmel, Brett Carducci, Jordy Ellner, Bart Coleman, J. P. Buck, Bruce Kaplan, and Neal Brennan. In New York, Bob Mankoff scored us access to all sorts of incredible places, including a few he probably shouldn’t have. We never would have known where to start looking for omuneepo in Tanzania without the help of Latif Nasser, and even then we wouldn’t have been able to get there without the wherewithal of William Rutta (it was our pleasure to be Rutta’s “number-one most flexible and happy travelers”). Our excursion to Japan was far less daunting thanks to the tireless work of Goh Abe, Aki Yorihiro, Moka Umehara, Araki Takahiro, Jocelyn Martinez, Jessica Milner Davis, Daniel Feit, Terje Langeland, Nami Moto, Katsura Asakichi, Megumu Tanigawa, and several other members of the Japanese Humor and Laughter Society, not to mention the energetic and sometimes debaucherous assistance of Bill Reilly, Mike Staffa, and all their randy pirates. Jytte Klausen, in her work and over the phone, provided us the lay of the land in Denmark and Sweden. And when we got there, Kurt Westergaard and Lars Vilks had no good reason to let us into their homes, considering the sort of people who sometimes show up at their door. But they let us in anyway, and for that we are grateful. Naomi Zeveloff, Erin Breeze, Vanessa Rousselot, Yaniv Shani, Chaya Ostrower, and Rami Mehdawi prepared us for the places and issues we’d explore in the West Bank and Israel; hopefully someday we can all get together over a conciliatory Mediterranean breakfast. (If Israeli omelets and Palestinian yogurt can’t bring about lasting peace, we don’t know what can.) For professional and personal reasons, we are beholden to Steve and Pam Wilson for providing us access to the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, just as we are indebted to John Glick, Patch Adams, and everyone else we met in Peru for welcoming us into their clown family. And last but not least, much gratitude goes to Andy Nulman for granting us VIP treatment (twice) at the world’s greatest comedy festival, before we had the guts to ask.
An equally sizable number of people helped on the academic part of our journey. Pete’s Humor Research Team (aka HuRT) at the University of Colorado at Boulder never balked at his strange requests, so credit goes to team members Ryan Brauchler, Erin Percival Carter, Robert Collins, Caley Cuneo, Christina Kan (HuRL’s Lab Manager), Robert Keenan, Bridget Leonard, Linds Panther, Roxanne Ross, Julie Schiro, Abigail Schneider, and Rachel Stermer. They were far from Pete’s only collaborators. In the academic realm, Elise Chandon Ince, Phil Fernbach, Dan Goldstein, Gil Greengross, Jennifer Harman, Kathleen Vohs, Lawrence Williams, and Max Justicz contributed their time and expertise. Outside the ivory tower, Alex Sidtis, Alex Berg, and Joe Wengert at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre; Jaime Kopke, Sonnet Hanson, and Lindsey Housel at the Denver Art Museum; Steve Krauss and Ari Halper at Grey New York; Larry Swiader, Danny Rouhier, and Liz Sabatiuk at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy; and Jeff Richins, Ryan Smith, and Danny Anderson at Qualtrics Online Survey Software all provided access to their expertise, resources, work spaces, and humorists, no questions asked. Meanwhile, Andrea Grimes at San Francisco Public Library’s Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor and Reaux Flagg at U.C. Berkeley’s Folklore Archive proved invaluable sleuths when detective work arose. Finally, our gratitude goes out to the entirety of the University of Colorado library staff, especially Janet Freeman and Betty Grebe, for handling with patience and grace our hundreds upon hundreds of book, journal, and interlibrary loan requests. Sorry about the late returns.
We can’t forget the folks who helped spread the word about what we were up to, plus those who made sure what we were saying was a polished as possible. Tor Myhren at Grey New York was so taken with our idea that he gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse. Lewis Wallace at Wired.com, Bryan Maygers at the Huffington Post, Lauren Friedman at Psychology Today, and John Swanburg at Slate offered us invaluable online soapboxes, and Josh Mishell crafted the logo and Venns we proudly sported there and a hundred other places around the world. John Wenzel and Grace Hood, among others, covered our exploits; Kristen Sink snapped our publicity photos; and Sean Guillory, Andy Wood, Ben Roy, Paul Ronca, and Alf LaMont helped get us on stage all over North America, before we had much to show for our efforts. We looked and sounded much better than we deserved thanks to a crack team of wordsmiths and videosmiths, namely Rick Griffith, Josh Johnson, Daniel Junge, Vanessa Martinez, Shane Mauss, and Evan Nix. We owe McKenzie Binder a weekend for the one she spent tidying our bibliography. Jane Le added a final sheen to our prose, courtesy of her passion for terminating dangling modifiers with extreme prejudice and her unrivaled knowledge of Yiddish. Ron Doyle, founder and president of the Humor Code Fan Club, understood what we were up to better than we did, and deserves his own media empire for the marketing work he did on our behalf. Brit Hvide, Marie Kent, Leah Johanson, Richard Rhorer, and everyone else at Simon & Schuster deserve accolades for their endless patience and support, despite all our odd questions and rookie mistakes. And of course, we are beyond grateful to our editor, Ben Loehnen, for his incredibly enthusiastic embrace of our project and his unrivaled skill at making every word, sentence, and paragraph shine.
Last but not least, there are a select few who were always there for us, providing feedback, encouragement, and support in numerous unquantifiable ways. For Pete, that includes his mother, Kathleen McGraw, Mark Ferne, Joni Klippert, Mike Koenig, Jeff Larsen, Julie Nirvelli, Michael Sargent, Janet Schwartz, Marcel Zeelenberg, Jaclyn Allen, Adam Alter, Adam Grant, Chip Heath, and especially Dan Ariely. Most of all, Pete wants to thank Caleb Warren and his sister, Shannon Sorino. His research would be rubbish if it weren’t for Caleb’s time, effort, and impressive intellect, and he never would have thought that he was funny enough to get on stage (twice) if Shannon hadn’t always laughed at his jokes.
My shortlist of personal advocates includes George Smith, Vince Darcangelo, Jared Jacang Maher, Hester McNeil, Kelly Warner, and above all, my parents, Jim and Barb Warner. And I can never fully repay my family, Emily, Gabriel, and Charlotte, for the fatherless weeks, spotty Skype calls, unanswered e-mails, late nights in the home office, and moments of grouchiness. All I can say to them is through good times and bad, the funny and not-so-funny stuff, you’ve been a wonderful audience—and a wonderful team.
