How Apple Became a $3 Trillion Company & Why We Love to Laugh

It is so tempting. The gas pump clicks off indicating that your tank is full but there is that urge to squeeze out a few more drops. Should you? This episode begins by explaining what happens when you do that. ⁠https://cluballiance.aaa.com/the-extra-mile/advice/car/seo-should-you-really-top-off-your-gas-tank⁠ Apple is a huge company worth $3 trillion. It makes money from products (iPhone, computers, smart watch etc.) and services (App store, Apple Pay etc.). Most Apple products are made and assembled in China and the impact Apple has made in China is astonishing and a story you must hear. Here to tell it is Patrick McGee. He was the Financial Times’s principal Apple reporter from 2019 to 2023. Previously, he was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and is now the author of the book ⁠Apple In China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company (https://amzn.to/4cXXwfC).⁠ We love to laugh. We seek it out. We go to comedy clubs and watch funny movies in order to laugh. Why do we do that? What is it about laughter that makes us feel so good? What makes something or someone funny? Joining me for an interesting discussion about this is Jesse David Fox, Senior Editor and comedy critic at Vulture. He also hosts a podcast called ⁠Good One (https://www.vulture.com/good-one)⁠ and he is author of the book, ⁠Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture―and the Magic That Makes It Work (https://amzn.to/4iIRnW5).⁠ All cancer is scary but pancreatic is particularly horrible because it often goes undetected until it is too late – and because no one really knows what causes it. Interestingly, there does seem to be a link between pancreatic cancer and sunlight. Listen as I explain. ⁠https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150430082151.htm⁠ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! CARAWAY: Get 10% off your next purchase, at ⁠https://Carawayhome.com/SYSK⁠ or use code SYSK at checkout. Caraway. Non-Toxic cookware made modern. MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at ⁠https://MintMobile.com/something⁠ ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at ⁠⁠⁠https://FactorMeals.com/something50off⁠⁠⁠ TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to ⁠⁠⁠https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know: Why topping off your tank at the gas station is such a bad idea? Then, the untold story of Apple, and how they make so much money beyond phones and computers.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Really, the money is in the App Store. So anytime you buy a digital app, Apple's taking 30%. And then, you've got things like Google paying Apple $20 billion a year just to have Google, the default search engine, on every iPhone.

• 1:56Mike Carruthers?

  Also, the interesting link between sunshine and pancreatic cancer. And laughter. What is it that makes something funny? And why do we enjoy comedy?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  We have comedy because of an evolutionary need to laugh. We laugh probably for the same reasons primates laugh and other animals laugh. Comedy is essentially an outgrowth of that, and that has evolved as a way for society to essentially relieve the tensions of existence.

• 2:22Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:57Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I keep meaning to remind you that we have, unless you're listening to an ad-free version of this podcast, we have, as you will notice, great sponsors, people we work with closely and vet their products and services and feel very good about them. And I keep meaning to remind you that there are, in the show notes for every episode, are the promo codes that you can use if you hear a sponsor that sounds interesting. And believe me, they're all interesting. And often, they have a promo code where you get a better deal. And those promo codes are always in the show notes. They're on a website, so you can always take advantage of them. And I hope you do. Hi, welcome to

• 5:04Mike Carruthers?

  this episode of Something You Should Know. First up, admit it, you have pumped gas in your car after the pump clicks off. You just want to squeeze out those last few drops to fill up the tank as much as possible. Well, it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea for your wallet, your car, and the environment. First of all, it can spill gasoline onto the ground, which is bad news for the environment, because that gasoline has to go somewhere. But topping off damages the onboard refueling vapor recovery system. It's a charcoal canister that collects potentially harmful fuel vapor during the refueling process, and then absorbs

• 5:47Mike Carruthers?

  it using activated carbon. When you saturate those filters by overfilling your tank, that can lead to poor performance, damage to the vehicle, the check engine light will come on, and then you get stuck with totally avoidable repairs. Also, gas stations are equipped with vapor recovery systems that recover gas that you pump in after the automatic shut-off goes on, and that goes back into the gas station's tank. So remember, topping off means you're paying for gas that's going back to the gas station. So for all those reasons, when the pump clicks off by itself, avoid that temptation to squeeze out just a few more drops. And that is something you should know.

• 6:36Mike Carruthers?

  There is a 50/50 chance, here in the US anyway, there's a 50/50 chance that your smartphone is an Apple iPhone. And/or maybe you have an Apple computer, or an Apple Watch, or something Apple. Apple is a big company. They make a lot of things. They have an almost cult-like following. Your iPhone, if you have one, was most likely made or assembled in China. Almost all Apple products are made and assembled in China. iPhones, iPads, and many MacBooks are assembled there. Some of it is done in India and Vietnam and here in the US, but China is the big player.

• 7:16Mike Carruthers?

  We're about to take a very interesting and very different look at Apple than you have ever heard before with Patrick McGee. He was the Financial Times' principal Apple reporter from 2019 to 2023. Previously, he was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and he's written a book called "Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company." Hi, Patrick. Thanks for coming on Something You Should Know.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, Mike.

• 7:44Mike Carruthers?

  So you could probably take three hours to answer this question, but I'm hoping you don't. What is Apple? What makes Apple, Apple? Why is it such this shiny thing on the hill that everybody bows to? What is it about Apple?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I love that question. Okay, nuanced answer. On the one hand, you could say China makes Apple, Apple. I mean, there is no country on the planet remotely capable of offering the same combination of cost, quantity, skill, expertise to make a quarter billion iPhones a year, let alone every other device. The nuanced answer is that China is capable of that because China has been the sole recipient of Apple's huge investment over the last 25 years in making those technologies possible. So China isn't just the world leader in a world's electronics. It's the world leader because Apple taught them how to do that over an investment period that's so consequential, I compare it to a geopolitical event, like the fall of the Berlin Wall,

• 8:45Speaker 01

  but it's one we don't know about because where all the action was happening, China, there's a censored media landscape, and all the main actors on the Apple side are stricken by NDAs, so they can't really talk about what they've been doing.

• 8:57Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that certainly brings up a lot of questions. But before I ask those about China... Let's go back further to the beginning of what made Apple, Apple. And a lot of people point to Steve Jobs as the reason he is the, the driving force of that company or was. Do you buy that?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Apple is founded in 1976 by two guys named Steve in a garage. And the ethos at the time is that you build your own computers. And so Apple sets up factories in places like California and in the early 1980s, Singapore and Ireland, because at a sort of continental level, they want to have local production. IBM really upends the game in 1981 when they invent the IBM PC. And then the PC clone industry, of course, totally follows in their footsteps. And there's nothing special about the IBM PC in terms of what it can do for you, the usability, like any of the things that Steve Jobs loved. What they did is they sort of declared war on Apple and others through the, let's say,

• 10:01Speaker 01

  the mundane business things, logistics, manufacturing, distribution. And so all these sort of boring things that Steve Jobs didn't necessarily care about became foundational for bringing PCs to an affordable price and relying on a sort of an emerging global interchangeable part supply chain that very much is, is first founded in places like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. And then by the time Apple is adopting this strategy out of sheer desperation in 1996, China is just beginning to become a major player. So that's the sort of quick and dirty history and we can go into any more detail as you'd like.

• 10:37Mike Carruthers?

  But originally, Apple was a, a personal computer company. That's what their first product was, was selling personal computers. Yeah?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:47Mike Carruthers?

  And they were made here, were they not?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Any Mac that you would have bought in the 1980s and for most of the 1990s, if you bought it in America, it was made here. If you bought it in Europe, it was made in Ireland. If you bought it in Asia, it was made in Singapore by Apple.

• 11:00Mike Carruthers?

  By Apple, not contracted out. That all changed when?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  So this is a bit of history that nobody really knows. In 1996, a year before Steve Jobs comes back from a 12-year exile to save the company, Apple is in crisis, near bankruptcy. They hired a Chapter 11 bankruptcy lawyer and they were days away from not being able to meet payroll. At the time, they had 13,000 employees and they had so little cash that it wasn't going to be able to happen. So they had to sell a computer factory they owned in Colorado, Fountain, Colorado, and that gives them about $200 million and buys them a little bit of time. And in the next months, they're able to renegotiate some loans with Japanese lenders. They are able to sell about $600 million in an oversubscribed bond sale.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  And, you know, they haven't fixed anything in terms of having a hit product, but in the wake of Windows 95 sort of dominating the landscape, they've at least bought themselves a little bit of time. And so the CEO at the time is a guy named Gil Amelio. He only lasts 500 days. He's always been considered the wrong guy for the job, and I think he was. He wasn't very charismatic. He wasn't a product guy, but he did three major things. One is the selling of the Colorado Fountain factory because that initiates a global outsourcing strategy. So for the first time, Apple, for its computers, begins making them through contract manufacturers, which is big savings. It financially goes through the bond maneuvers that I just mentioned. And the third, most important thing is he realizes the software operating system needs a massive reboot.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  And through that, he brings back Steve Jobs by acquiring Next Computer, the Jobs-owned company that was really itself on the brink. And yet, there was a perfect match made in heaven between Apple and Next.

• 12:47Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know anyone that has the insight you do into this. And I've always wondered, and I just...

• 12:57Mike Carruthers?

  There are plenty of companies that do things and, you know, build stuff in China and have a history and all that. But there's something about Apple that that just is so, I don't know, untouchable, so magnificent, so in so many people's eyes. I mean, how many other companies do people line up outside the store for, I don't know, days to to get a watch? I mean, it's just, it, what is that?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So I like to ask people, what was your favorite Dell computer from the early 2000s? Right? You can't even name one. Whereas we could have a real argument for, you know, an hour about whether the G4 Cube, this like amazing cube shaped computer was the best. Was it was it the candy colored iMac? You know, was it a tangerine colored iMac? Was it the sunflower iMac that looked like a sunflower and sort of had like an anthropomorphic feel to it? I mean, Apple was just doing designs that nobody else was even contemplating. It's not like HP was coming up with designs and we didn't like them. They just didn't even care about design. So I make this big distinction because Apple is actually kind of late in terms of going to China. Everybody's doing it at that at that stage and they don't really consolidate into China until 2003.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  I think that's a fair bit later than people think. So the candy colored iMac, for instance, and really nobody knows this. It was built by LG in South Korea. And when it was a big success, LG set up factories in Mexicali, Mexico, and Wales, of all places. Foxconn, a company people associate with Apple, then comes on board, but they don't just sort of consolidate everything into China. They build it in China, in the Czech Republic and in Fullerton, California. So the distinction I would make is Dell, HP, the PC clones, they're all moving to China because of what is possible. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry. What is available there? And Apple is moving because of what's possible.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  What they realize is that Johnny Ive, the chief designer, can come up with anything and armies of abundant and cheap laborers in China will work on a conveyor belt assembly system to conjure it into reality in massive scale and at fat margins. So everybody's going there for cost savings. Apple is moving to China for unconstrained design possibilities. The cost savings are there, they're baked in, but they're not the primary reason.

• 15:15Mike Carruthers?

  That's a very different, two very different ways of getting there, isn't it?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it's, I mean, it's absolutely instrumental to the company. So when Steve Jobs come back, comes back, he doesn't know who Johnny Ive is. That's not someone he hires. Johnny Ive is already there. The first time they meet, Steve Jobs plans on firing him and Johnny Ive has his own resignation letter in his pocket. Instead, they completely hit it off. And what Steve Jobs recognizes is that Johnny Ive is a brilliant designer, but he maybe at the time wasn't a brilliant communicator of his own worth. So the rest of the company, the higher ups before Steve Jobs came on, never really allowed him to, you know, go wild with his designs. So they were creating pretty boring computers in 1997. And Steve Jobs realizes the potential of what Johnny Ive is capable of.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And that's where the iMac comes out. And that really is the V product that saves the company. Now, they're still in crisis multiple years later because of the dot com boom and some other items. And then you could say the iPod is the company that really saves them. And of course, that leads to the iPhone. But at the time, it certainly was the case that Apple was going to go under if the iMac wasn't a hit and it becomes America's best selling computer.

• 16:27Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about Apple, its incredible success and its relationship to China. My guest is Patrick McGee, author of the book, Apple in China, The Capture of the World's Greatest Company. We had a guest on a while ago. I'll never forget. He talked about how much plastic we all consume. And the estimate is about a credit card's worth of plastic per week. Now, that plastic comes from a lot of sources and a big one is the cookware we use as well as cutting boards and food storage containers. Now, we have converted to caraway cookware in our house. I have gotten, I've gotten rid of all my nonstick cookware because it's that coating that's part of the problem.

• 17:11Mike Carruthers?

  In fact, two and a half minutes is all it takes before a nonstick pan overheats and releases toxins. And who wants that? And there have been some wonderful unintended consequences to this shift to caraway cookware.

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  Plus, if you visit carawayhome.com/sysk, you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners, so visit carawayhome.com/sysk, or use code SYSK at checkout. Caraway, non-toxic cookware made modern. If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream.

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• 20:07Mike Carruthers?

  So Patrick, Apple has this customer loyalty, customer fan, customer, I don't know what you call it. Was that by?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Cult.

• 20:18Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, it's cult-like. Is that by design? Did they work at that? Or is that a byproduct of all this other stuff you're talking about?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great question. No, I would say that's in the DNA of Steve Jobs. Because there's a time in the early 80s when the Apple II is doing incredibly well. And Steve Jobs is upset that all these third-party companies are making money off of what he thinks of as his creation. Right? So Apple does things like the OS, but it's not the company making Lotus Rider, if you can remember an app like that. And so Steve Jobs is ambivalent at best about this relationship where Apple is sort of the platform. And then you've got software companies making money off selling the software, you know, the real features, the killer apps that you actually use the computer for, as well as hardware.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I mean, if, if, if Apple comes out with a computer, you know, people making keyboards, people making speakers, all sorts of hardware peripherals begin to make money. And Steve Jobs is always ambivalent about that, including when the iPhone is built, because it's everybody else at Apple who thinks we need to have an app store. And Steve Jobs, at least in the early stages, basically wants to have very few external apps. Google Maps was, was one of the early ones, but he wanted Apple to, to control that ecosystem. So the control of software and hardware and services is totally integral to Apple today. And it has been since the founding days in a garage. And that really is the DNA of Steve Jobs.

• 21:43Mike Carruthers?

  And according to the legend, and maybe it's just legend, or maybe it is so, and you would probably know. Steve Jobs is the heart and soul of Apple, that he is Apple.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And the company without him basically lost its innovative spirit, lost its soul, if you will, its raison d'etre. And by 1996, it is nearly totally failed. And the reason it survives is Guillermo Lio brings back Steve Jobs. And what I think reporters, media analysts have totally missed is that there's too much history of Apple product design, product marketing, how the things work, you know, product reviews. And we've completely ignored how Apple makes its products. And that is so foundational to its success that when Steve Jobs dies, who gets made CEO? The head of operations.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  So the company knows better than anybody else that what they're capable of in China is, you know, the defining feature that allows the company to become a $3 trillion company today. And yet I think we in the media have totally failed to understand this narrative. And so what I sort of flip on its head is that Apple wasn't just exploiting workers in China. Beijing was allowing Apple to exploit workers in China so that China could in turn exploit Apple.

• 23:06Mike Carruthers?

  I mean, I get it. Apple's a big company and they make a lot of things and they have stores in lots of nice malls and whatnot. They're so big because of what?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Well, the genius of Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive is what made Apple products unique. But it's the genius of Tim Cook and Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn, that made Apple products so ubiquitous. So when Steve Jobs dies in 2011, having Tim Cook become the CEO is sort of a decade-long signal that we don't really need to be building another device that comes after the iPhone. We just need to take our existing creations, iPhone, MacBook, iPad, and scale them globally, ship them globally. So, you know, something like the iPhone goes from fewer than 5 million units in 2007

• 23:59Speaker 01

  to 230 million units by 2015. These are the annual figures, right? So, scale is the hidden force.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  You know, the unheralded secret sauce of Apple, but 90% of it is all in China.

• 24:17Mike Carruthers?

  But Apple, Apple is worth so much money because of electronic devices that it sells. Is it any other business? I mean, because people will say, tell you, you know, McDonald's doesn't make money off hamburgers. They make money off the real estate that the restaurants are on. Is, is there kind of a similar formula? Or it, Apple is what it is. It's selling phones and computers, and that's why we make so much money.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  So more than 50% of revenue is the iPhone alone. And then when you add in the other hardware products that we can all name and recognize from AirPods to Macs, that gets towards 75 to 80%. And the remaining 20% is a fairly new development, and that's called services. Now, they're important because when, when Apple sells hardware, it's making about 35% gross margin, which is to say if someone spends $100 on some Apple products, Apple takes $35 as profit. That's already really high. Services, they make 75% profit. Now, some of the services you would think, you would know, which is like Apple Music, you know, the fitness offerings that they have, Apple News.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  That's, that's almost, almost none of it. Really, the, the money is in the App Store. So anytime you buy a digital app through any, through, you know, through the, the App Store that has, I think, 2 million apps, Apple's taking 15, but more usually 30%. And then you've got things like Google pays Apple $20 billion a year. Basically, this is pure profit just to have Google the default search engine on every iPhone. And there are, I think, 1.3 billion iPhones existing in the wild. So it's all about the iPhone. Even if not all the money is coming from hardware revenue, it's software revenue that's generated off of the iPhone.

• 26:03Mike Carruthers?

  So where's Apple headed? And is AI like a thing for Apple? Is that like a big shiny thing that, the object to, to look at for them? Or they're making phones and computers?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  No, it should be, but they're they're flailing. I mean, they're basically dealing with a lawsuit right now because last June, they introduced a bunch of AI features. I don't mean introduced in terms of in a product. I mean, they showed off what they would have, and they were supposed to have some of them by September, so for the new iPhone 16. And then basically, all of what they showed was supposed to be available within a few months. Now we're in May, and the features still don't exist. So they were telling you to go buy the new phone with Apple Intelligence, right? That's Apple's version of AI for features that don't exist and won't exist for at least another few months and possibly up to a year. So they're not really doing well in the AI race.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  However, they have the hardware and the software and the operating system all in the one device, right? So if I say to ChatGPT, hey, ChatGPT, go into my email and figure out what my mom told me last week and and remind me what that was or whatever. ChatGPT is not allowed to do that, right? It's not allowed to leave its own app, as it were, and search your phone for information. Siri is allowed to do that. So even though Apple's behind in the AI race, it has an ability that it will not give to any other customers because or any other competitors. Because Apple can say for privacy reasons, we're not going to allow any apps to go through your own personal data, but Siri basically already has that access.

• 27:41Mike Carruthers?

  Wow, I hadn't thought of that, but that's that. That's pretty amazing. I mean, that's that's quite a. That's quite a leg up.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's a monopoly, but not necessarily an illegal monopoly. I mean, they own the operating system and they have for a long time. So they can do things with the operating system that nobody else can do. You know, to give a couple other examples of this, if you want to do wireless payment, you have to use Apple Pay. There are other digital wallets, but they're not allowed on the iPhone.

• 28:08Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that seems like a monopoly, doesn't it? Well, well, only if you have an Apple phone, though. If you don't have an Apple phone, maybe you can use those other apps, right?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so look, I've never thought the anti-Joist argument against Apple is very good, but people that complain about this, you know, legally or just on, you know, a social media platform, will will sort of define the market as the 1.3 billion iPhones, right? Whereas when Apple would define the market, they would define it as the existing world of smartphones. And in that sense, they only have a 20% market share. Actually, I think that's a pretty reasonable defense.

• 28:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that surprises me, and I had read that somewhere recently that that Apple's share of of smartphones is a lot smaller than I think most people believe.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is 50% in America, but that's its biggest market. It has never been more than 20% globally. But here's the craziest statistic, and I promise you some crazy statistics. Apple earns about 85% of industry revenue for smartphones globally. So find me another industry where a minority player commands virtually all the profits in the whole industry.

• 29:14Mike Carruthers?

  What I find so astonishing from the things you say and write about, that Apple has been in China for so long, doing so much, that Apple has changed China, and that Apple has been training people to make electronics in China so well that now China makes really good electronics themselves that are not Apple electronics.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Apple has been providing China training for so long that it is not clear the Chinese industry there still needs Apple. So what I would point to is that if you're able to get your phones on the late, sorry, if you're able to get your hands on the latest Huawei, Oppo, Vivo phones, you will be holding in your hands phones that are better made than what Apple currently does. Now, again, that might sound a little bit nuts, and you can't buy these phones, for the most part, in America. But for instance, the Huawei Mate XT is a phone that is a little bit thicker than an iPhone, but it unfolds twice into a 10.2-inch tablet, which is the standard size of an iPad. Apple's supposed to have something like that in 2027.

• 30:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is quite a story, the relationship between Apple and China that, as you point out, hasn't been written about or talked about much. Patrick McGee's been my guest. He is author of a book called Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Patrick, thanks for coming on and telling this story.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  All right. Thanks, Mike.

• 30:46Mike Carruthers?

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• 31:29Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:13Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:54Mike Carruthers?

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• 33:35Mike Carruthers?

  Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Who doesn't like to laugh? Laughter brings us a sense of joy and happiness, even if it's only for a few moments. It is so pleasurable and it connects us with other people. We like people who can make us laugh. And we like to laugh so much that we seek out comedy to make us laugh more, to force

• 34:18Mike Carruthers?

  that feeling because it feels so good. What is comedy? Is it magic? Is it an art form? What makes something funny? And what makes some people funnier than others? Well, here to delve into this is Jesse David Fox. He's senior editor and comedy critic at Vulture. He hosts the podcast Good One, where he interviews comedians about their comedy process. And he's author of a book called Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work. Hi Jesse, welcome. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Hey, so why do we have comedy? Do we know? What itch does it scratch? What does it do for us? Why is it?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  We have comedy because of an evolutionary need to laugh that existed before humans existed. Like, we laugh probably for the same reasons primates laugh and other animals laugh, which is a sort of way of communicating you're in a playful state and a way for relieving tension in specific moments. You know, if you're play fighting with another gorilla, you're a gorilla in this example, you're playing fighting with another gorilla, you would laugh to be like, we're having fun here. Comedy is essentially an outgrowth of that. And that has evolved as a way for society to essentially relieve the tensions of existence.

• 35:41Mike Carruthers?

  One of the things about it that I've always have always found fascinating is how you could sit alone in a room and watch a movie or, you know, something really funny and not laugh much. But it's when other people are with you that it becomes a collective laugh that that makes it funnier.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I mean, it truly is like laughter is essentially a form of communication. It is a social phenomenon. Henri Bergson, in his very influential book about the, you know, about comedy theory, it's called Laughter, An Essay on the Meeting of the Comic. He talks about how our laughter is always the laughter of a group, that our laughter needs an echo. We need the state of being with other people to really feel the need to communicate laughter, opposed to just sort of like appreciate that comedy is happening.

• 36:32Mike Carruthers?

  Do we know, I mean, obviously, things have probably been funny for as long as people have been around. But when it actually kind of became a thing, like, like, this is comedy.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It essentially started happening before people realized that's what it was. Like, obviously, there have been comedic plays. And in many ways, what we think of comedy somewhat outgrew that and somewhat outgrew of.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Midstal shows in the 19th century. But really what we think of comedy as a distinct art form, opposed to comedy as people being on stage telling stock jokes that everyone has, really started happening in the way that we think of it in the 1950s, where comedians were taking more ownership and more authorship over the material they were doing. And that's, and the audience was expecting that. They were going to hear and see the perspective of the specific comedian. And though it's unclear when the actual term stand-up started, people were essentially doing something then closer to what we think of, where before that time period, though

• 37:43Speaker 02

  people were telling jokes, it feels like, almost like a different thing and more like an outgrowth of the fact that people in general tell jokes.

• 37:51Mike Carruthers?

  Comedy, it seems to me, because you can look back at old comedy, has gotten so much more sophisticated and, or at least it evolves, because you can look back at stuff from the 50s and 60s and it's just not funny. But it was then, but it's not now.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Comedy is so context-dependent in ways that's almost hard to understand, because, you know, in some ways you see a person standing on stage, it's like, well, how could anyone ever have thought this was funny? But, you know, a lot of these jokes demand a sort of connection between the comedian and the audience at the time, and they're sort of talking the same language and they're pulling from the same reference points. And that is essentially what creates what we think of as funny. It is a sort of a relationship between the comedy being created and the audience. When you're watching it now, you do not have that same relationship, so you don't sort of feel the same way towards the comedian on stage that they did. And we are so used to, as you said, more sophisticated, you know, often faster in

• 38:56Speaker 02

  some ways, less broad forms of comedy. And societal norms change, right? So it's like, there's lots of people like to say, like, oh, you can't say that anymore. And yeah, of course, like, you just wouldn't say a thing that people have already been saying, but like, language evolves and comedians evolve and we sort of are, we want our comedians to sort of really reflect the world that we're living in. And that's the beauty of the, you know, and that's the beauty of the art form. Is its ability to reflect the moment we're living in. But the negative of that is, you know, when you're no longer in the moment, it does not hit the same way.

• 39:30Mike Carruthers?

  This might be an impossible question to answer, but give it a shot.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 39:36Mike Carruthers?

  There are lots of really good comedians, lots of very funny people. But then there are these standouts. Richard Pryor, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, people that just seem to be head and shoulders above everybody else, at least in terms of their success. Maybe not in terms of they're funny, but, but, but why, why do you suppose? What is it about them that catapults them higher than others?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  I subscribe to a theory of comedy called play theory, which is essentially comedy outgrows, is an outgrowth of our desire to sort of play, play with language, play with other people. And, and so as a result, the, the relationship a comedian is able to create with his audience is that of essentially a friendship. It's not the exact same thing, but the way you laugh with your friends, the comedian essentially is able to artificially create that same bond. And the comedians who are really successful represent a feeling of trust, represent a feeling of friendship. They feel like that's how I would talk if I was able to be a comedian. These are the types of insights that I'm trying to think about myself.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  And usually the sort of biggest comedians really represent about something that's happening in that culture at that exact moment and really speak to it in a, is almost an acute way. And then, and people go to them for that specific service. And it's like, You know, Jerry Seinfeld's example was sort of like his focus on sort of mundane objects was it was a time where people were processing like the moment in civilization or moment in our society where we were thinking about commercialization and and mass production and focusing a little bit more on the products that are now part of our life. And Jerry sort

• 41:38Speaker 02

  of spoke to that moment. Now, there were other comedians doing observational comedy at the time Jerry became popular, but clearly there just is some sort of special thing about how his brain processed it, you know?

• 41:51Mike Carruthers?

  I remember, I did stand up years ago for a little while and never, I couldn't stand the lifestyle of that. But it was fun and and and I became somewhat of a student of it. And and I remember seeing Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno in concert doing at a club. And I was so impressed by how, yet it looks so easy and yet there is such a rhythm and an art form and a science to it that, you know, that you walk out of there and your stomach hurts. And and they and they do it in a way where that you're laughing and then they give you a little break and then you're laughing again and then you get a little

• 42:33Mike Carruthers?

  break. And it kind of jumped out at me as I as I witnessed it and realized there is a real, to the guys who are at the top, there is such a science to it as well as art that just floors me. I mean, it just it is so enjoyable to watch.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, especially those guys are seeing the sort of science of it in particular and really thinking about how to maximize impact of the material they have. And I think How Jerry sees is essentially you're having a conversation, but you're the only one talking, right? And that is very, very specific to sort of the American style, which is more conversational. So what he's able to do is be, make it feel like you're talking to the audience and that you're talking with the audience, but have things that are so prepared, but never lose the illusion that is being made up on the spot. It is actually one of the more complicated

• 43:34Speaker 02

  things for any comedian really to do is to convey that this is the first time you're saying something that you clearly have had to have said like over and over again for 10 years. It's, you know, it's almost like a performance thing, which is like you have to be able to, like an actor, be attached to the truth of the joke when you wrote it. And you have to be able to convey that sort of fun to the audience. And then also think about like, okay, like a pollster, like a statistician, like a scientist, you clock the reception, you then think about, is there a way to get the reception a little bit more, a little bit less? You then, I'm sure Jerry Seinfeld, I don't know if he will literally

• 44:19Speaker 02

  do this, but I'm sure when he puts together a set, his brain has an image. It's almost like a sound wave of like, it's going to go like this. And it's like, I should do a longer joke here because the audience might be exhausted from laughing too much.

• 44:32Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about political correctness and, and it seems like, and there were complaints about how that was having a real dampening effect on comedy, that you couldn't talk about things you used to be able to talk about because someone might get offended.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  I, I push back on the idea a bit. I, I understand the argument for talking about certain subjects. One, comedy is a place you can do that. So to deprive comedy of that does seem like a disservice. Also, it is freeing to be in a space where there is not the, the sort of tightness that, you know, we experienced in the rest of our lives. That said, you know,

• 45:16Speaker 02

  If political correctness is hampering comedy right now, or the last 10, 15 years, no one mentioned that to comedians and comedy audiences in so much as it's never been more popular. There's never been more comedians of more types having more success than right now, the time where people are hypothetically too sensitive. That said, language evolves. There are so many words that we do not say that were said 50 years ago. They're not all offensive words, you know. If a comedian started calling marijuana grass onstage, the audience would not like it. Now, can they call marijuana grass? Sure. It just

• 45:58Speaker 02

  will date the comedian. Ultimately, I go back to this, which is the idea that like, you know, some people complain about audiences being too sensitive, but as a person who really wants to push comedy as an art form and to both make it grow as an art form and to even convey to people that it is an art form, that demands an audience that is invested, that is sensitive, that cares about the quality of it. If you're a good enough comedian, it's not a problem. The biggest comedians in the world generally say what they're trying to say, and if they can't get the audience on board with it, that is not the audience's fault. The job of the comedian is to figure out how to communicate what they want to

• 46:43Speaker 02

  say in a way in which the audience will receive it. If you're saying it away and the audience does not receive it, then that is a failure of doing the job of communicating, of doing the job as an artist.

• 46:55Mike Carruthers?

  What about the business of comedy? And what I mean is that comedy clubs seemed to be really big in the 80s. And then it seemed to kind of fade away a little bit. I mean, there's always been comedy clubs since then, but it was big in the 80s and then it kind of died off. But you had mentioned earlier that there are more comedians today. And so where is the business?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Generally, the comedy boom of that really peaked in the 80s petered out sometime in the sort of mid 90s. And there's a variety of reasons for it. There was a lot of comedy clubs that did not necessarily have the highest standards in terms of who they're putting on stage. And you had an audience who kind of was just going to whatever comedy club was around because comedy was kind of a hot new thing to do, to go to comedy clubs in that way. The comedy club was still a fairly recent phenomenon. So that sort of petered out. And then through the course of the 90s and the aughts, a new type of relationship was being developed between comedian and the audience. And then that

• 47:57Speaker 02

  was supercharged by podcasting and social media, which is more and more, audiences are going to see a comedian they want to see. They are not just going to consume comedy because it's Friday night. And they're not just going to consume comedy because they're home from work and they want to laugh, so they're just put on Comedy Central and whatever's there, they'll watch. And instead, you have something which is more, you're going to see specific people do a specific type of comedy that you already like, and you have already become invested into them as a comedian, you're already familiar with your work, you've been following how their tour has developed on social media in one way or the other.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  And it's been huge for comedy clubs, because comedy clubs were really kind of just passively hoping people would just show up because it's Friday night and they wanted to see comedy. Or more so, comedy clubs were reliant on giving away free tickets in spaces near them, hoping people will show up and then buy alcohol, not caring about ticket sales and not caring about if the comedian has a good experience. So it's been really exciting because you're having comedy fans in a different way that has ever existed. And it's been really great for the business. And then you see it grow and grow to a point where, you know, before 1990,

• 49:26Speaker 02

  I think, you know, the amount of comedians who played Madison Square Garden was so limited. And then now it is a regular place for a lot of comedians to play or a lot of different types of comedians to play. And then you just go down to Radio City. So many different comedians can play. Radio City Music Hall, which is a 5,000 seat venue, Chicago Theater, which is, I think, a 3,000 whatever seat venue. And that's because comedians now have their own fans that are also fans of comedy. But that reshapes the business. And I think that is ultimately for the better because in the previous model, you essentially had all audiences hoping all comedians essentially do whatever they think comedy is.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  And the comedian is essentially in a service industry of providing the idea of stand-up comedy to these people. And now it's different. Now they're much more like artists where people are coming to see their perspective, point of view, where their way into which they express themselves. And for really all types of stand-up comedy, but this is also the case for some sketch comedians and people whose podcasting is sort of the main medium which they express themselves, there is just like a much deeper, more thoughtful relationship in terms of what the audience expects from the comedians they follow.

• 50:43Mike Carruthers?

  What do you think the future of comedy is? I mean, it's clearly evolved and changed and of course predicting the future is a pretty iffy business, but take a stab at it. What do you, where do you think it's going?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. You know, the thing about comedy is it's so adapted to the new technologies. So in some ways you're asking me, where do I see the future of technology? And clearly what will have to develop over the next 10, 15 years is how comedians could have social video or video careers that then builds into something more robust in terms of the live experience. I think what has happened currently is with new technologies in terms of Instagram video and TikTok, comedians are figuring out how to sort of game this. System, how to create content out of the live space.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  As technology develops, I think comedians will sort of learn how to be true with honoring the live moment and being present in the live moment, but also understanding that a sort of parallel career will exist online in some way. But like ultimately, you know, as I said, there was a stand-up comedy boom in the 1980s. And then, and I think 2009, I said, there's a sort of second comedy boom. And the truth is, that is 16 years ago. It's hard to argue something is a boom when it has been going for 16 years and not slowing down.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  And then you see the tremendous influence comedians are having, more so than I ever imagined, even when I wrote the book a couple of years ago. And yet, it will kind of look the same. It still will be a person onstage with a stool and a microphone and a glass of water. Or improv is still a group of people and four chairs onstage. And that's like what I go back to. It's like, all these things change and language changes, but like ultimately, people are doing the same things. And like, what changes is like, the part of their brains where the magic happens and comedy is produced.

• 53:00Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as much as I enjoy looking at and dissecting the elements of comedy, sometimes I really don't want to do that. I just want to enjoy it. Like, you can look at it too closely, and sometimes it's just fun to laugh. I've been speaking with Jesse David Fox. He is a senior editor and comedy critic at Vulture. His podcast is called Good One. And the name of his book is Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Jesse, thanks for coming on here today.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure.

• 53:40Mike Carruthers?

  All cancer is scary. And pancreatic cancer is really scary. One big reason is that people often don't discover it until it's too late to do anything. And the other scary thing is, no one really knows why people get it. But research at UC San Diego discovered a link between sunlight and pancreatic cancer. It seems that people in countries with weak sunlight have a higher incidence of pancreatic cancer. Weak sunlight is due to considerable cloud cover, or high latitude, meaning far from the equator. It seems that with weak sunlight, your body cannot produce a lot of vitamin D, and that's

• 54:20Mike Carruthers?

  that vitamin D deficiency which may be a risk factor for pancreatic cancer. The researchers discovered that people who live in sunny countries near the equator have only 1/6 the incident rate of pancreatic cancer as those who live far from the equator. The importance of sunlight deficiency strongly suggests, but doesn't prove, but suggests that the vitamin D deficiency may contribute to the risk of pancreatic cancer. While you can get vitamin D from your diet, experts say most people also require additional vitamin D to be produced by the body when skin is directly exposed to sunlight.

• 55:01Mike Carruthers?

  Skin exposed to sunshine indoors through a window will not produce vitamin D. Cloudy skies, shade, and dark-colored skin also reduce vitamin D production. And that is Something You Should Know. Something You Should Know is produced by Jennifer Brennan, Jeff Havison, and the executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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