Ted Audio Collective

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the science

of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the

minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

I guess today is comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan. I've seen all ten of his stand-up

specials, gone to see him perform live, and laughed so hard I could hardly breathe.

If you haven't seen his hot pockets routine, it's my favorite. Jim is racked up numerous

Grammy nominations and won an Emmy for his commentary on CBS Sunday Morning. He's doing

a tour with Jerry Seinfeld this fall. And in the meantime, he has a new comedy special

out on Amazon Prime, Dark Pale. Sometimes when people find out I have five kids, they

think I'm good at parenting, which is kind of like assuming people with lots of cats

are not crazy. I have no idea what I'm doing. And there's no learning curve. It's not

like when you learn from one child, you're going to apply to another one because kids are

annoying. They're like individual humans. With their own interests. I encounter this constantly.

I'm like, all right, you want to play basketball, you want to do parkour, and you want to

do karate. Well, you're all doing basketball. Because this guy is only making one trip.

And if you don't like it, you can blame your brother, whatever his name is.

I couldn't wait to talk to Jim about the psychology of comedy. There is a rumor on the internet

that you slept on the job so much. Pre your comedy career that you had to be woken up to get

fired. I did. I did have to be woken up to be fired. And the greatest, I think the greatest

irony outside of the fact that my boss, she had to wake me up and say, Jim, we got to let you

go is that a friend of mine, David Tell, had that as a joke before it even happened. So I couldn't

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