Description

Nowadays everyone’s inbox is filled with memes, cartoons and jokes about our continuing political, economic and environmental disasters. And even though each joke
is another reminder of a horrible situation, we laugh. Why?

Because we have to; laughter is critical in terrible times because it reminds us we can still feel joy, and that the purpose of life is to do more than just survive. No matter
the circumstances, people always crave what author Phillip Pullman calls “the value of
simple delight.”

Comedy vs. The Apocalypse looks at how comedy fights despair with a different kind of distancing: lightening frightening things by making them seem ridiculous. And
laughter’s benefits are more than just psychological; physicians have long known that humor has real health effects. And not just doctors: “A merry heart doeth good like a
medicine,” says no less an authority than God.

Join David Misch, Mel Brooks, Samuel Beckett, Sarah Silverman, Laurel & Hardy and Key & Peele to see how comedy laughs at tragedy – from the Black Death to the
Holocaust to 9/11; how it’s happening now; and how humor can help us get to tomorrow.