The Humor Code

Narrator Peter Berkot provides a strong conversational tone that captures the authors' prose well and keeps listeners' attention as they delve into an exploration of that notoriously elusive concept: humor. The authors tackle the question of how to make things funny in this fascinating text, which travels the world from Palestine to Tanzania, Japan, and elsewhere, trying to make sense of what makes people laugh. The answer isn't so easy to capture, but they find it revolves around the idea of "benign violations" in a given context, in other words, playing with the unexpected. Berkrot's deep, raspy voice proves compelling. Moreover, he manages the timing effectively for the various types of jokes throughout the audiobook, both good and bad. L.E. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine