NPR Laughter Therapy: Funny for a Living Audio CD – Unabridged, September 9, 2014

Not funny at all!

Informative AND funny!

This is the 2nd set of “Laughter Therapy” and much better than the first one.This 3 CD set (approximately 2 ½ hours) may not put you in stiches but it’ll certainly ex0plain to you how the comedy mind works. It’s comprised of 25 segments taken from NPR shows such as “Morning Edition”, “All Things Considered”, “Fresh Air withy Terry Gross” and a few others. Each story features either an interview with a comic personality or – in the case of those from the early 20th century – their biographer. The first CD focuses on the “legends of the past” with discussions about the talents of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and even the African American actor Stepin Fetchit. It continues into radio and TV with Groucho Marx, Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, Danny Thomas and Lucille BallDisc 2 continues with TV and comedy on records – this time with interviews with the actual subjects. Carl Reiner, Dick van Dyke, Bob Newhart, Bob & Ray, Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld.Disc 3 brings us to the 21st century with some comics I didn’t know. Eddie Izzard, Sarah Silverman and Louis CK I knew (and, by the way, this is NPR so all foul language is bleeped). But there are newer folks like Mike Birbiglia, Gabriel Inglesias and Aisha Tyler, who I hadn’t heard of before.The interviews by Terry Gross are always insightful and Scott Simon is almost as funny as his interviewees. This is a history of a century of making folks laugh in under three hours. More “educational” than “laugh out loud funny”. This is an “audio book I really enjoyed!I hope you found this review both informative and helpful.Steve Ramm“Anything Phonographic”.