The Hidden Skill Behind Great Crowd Work

Insights From The Viral King, Maury Povich: Pt. 1 (Comedy Mindhacks #126)

If, like me, you grew up in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, staying home sick from school wasn’t exactly a vacation. There was no Netflix, no YouTube, and certainly no endless scrolling. If you were fortunate enough to have cable, even MTV eventually ran out of things worth watching, so you started flipping through daytime television because, frankly, that was all there was. Before long, you’d find yourself watching Ricki Lake, Oprah, Sally Jessy Raphael, Jerry Springer, and, of course, Maury Povich.

I’ll admit something I never expected to admit. A little nostalgia got the best of me recently, and I ended up watching an hour-long interview with Maury Povich. I wasn’t expecting to learn anything about stand-up comedy from the guy who spent decades revealing paternity test results on national television. Instead, I found myself filling pages of notes because I kept thinking, “This guy gets it! He understands the value of psychology and how to get and keep human attention better than a lot of comedians.” By the time the interview ended, I’d learned a lesson that changed the way I think about crowd work but also joke writing. I’ll talk about crowd work in the current article (Comedy Mindhacks #126) and joke writing in the next.

With regard to crowd work, here’s my takeaway: Maury explained that whenever his show featured a paternity test, he had one non-negotiable rule. He refused to learn the results before walking on stage. He didn’t want producers telling him who the father was because, in his words, if he knew the answer, he’d know more than the guests, more than the audience in the studio, and more than the millions of people watching at home. He wanted to experience the discovery with everyone else. In short, he not only wanted to, but was willing to be surprised. Surprise was everything!

That answer stopped me in my tracks because, while it was his secret sauce, it has almost nothing to do with daytime television on its own. But it has everything to do with how humans operate. Again, it’s really about psychology. Maury understood that audiences don’t simply enjoy answers. They enjoy discovery; they enjoy surprise. And he knew he enjoyed surprises. The moment he knew the ending, he stopped experiencing the surprise of the story alongside everyone else.

As a comedian, I immediately thought about crowd work. I’ve watched plenty of comedians ask “setup questions” or “leading questions,” that is, questions they already know how they’re going to answer. Before the audience member even finishes speaking, the comedian is already steering the conversation toward a joke that was written before the show ever started. The audience may not know exactly where it’s headed, but they know something feels rigged or rehearsed because the question isn’t really a question anymore. It’s simply a setup disguised as curiosity. The problem? There’s no room for surprise.

Here’s the thing: I think audiences are remarkably good at detecting genuine curiosity. They know when someone is actually listening, and they know when someone is simply waiting for a chance to say the next funny thing. When a comedian is truly and honestly fascinated by another person’s answer, the audience becomes truly and honestly fascinated, too. When the comedian’s genuinely surprised, the audience will feel genuinely surprised. Suddenly, the room will feel alive because everyone is discovering something together, everyone is experiencing surprise together. But it all starts with the comedian being curious and taking the risk of being willing to be surprised.

The longer I perform, the more convinced I become that crowd work isn’t primarily about being quick. Speed matters, of course, and I admire comedians who can think at lightning speed; it’s a real skill, a real talent. But quickness isn’t where great crowd work begins. Great crowd work begins with curiosity. Being curious creates the opportunities and conditions that quickness can then respond to. Being curious is what creates the tension of risk and being surprised.

I wonder if this is one reason so many comedians plateau with crowd work?! They spend years trying to become faster instead of becoming more curious, instead of taking more risks of being genuinely surprised. They study comebacks, memorize tags, and practice punchlines while overlooking the one skill that makes all of those things matter in the first place. I don’t think better crowd work starts with better jokes; it starts with better questions.

I’ve noticed the same thing off stage. The most interesting people I know aren’t usually the fastest talkers or quickest thinkers. They’re just the people who ask thoughtful questions and genuinely care about the answers. They make other people feel interesting, and in doing so, they become interesting themselves. I don’t think that’s merely good conversation. I think it’s one of the hidden foundations of great comedy.

One of the unexpected joys of studying comedy is realizing I don’t always learn the most from comedians. Sometimes the best lessons come from psychologists, novelists, teachers, interviewers, filmmakers, or, in this case, a daytime television host most people associate with paternity tests. Great entertainers and performers, regardless of their field, are students of human nature first and entertainers second. They seem to understand that attention is earned, that surprise is invaluable, that being genuine goes a long way, and that allowing themselves to be surprised in real time (which means relinquishing some control) makes all the difference.

Maury’s lesson about curiosity was enough to change how I’ll think about crowd work from now on. Oddly enough, though, it wasn’t even the only thing I learned from that interview. Later in the conversation he casually mentioned Shakespeare, and I realized he’d stumbled onto another principle that explains why some jokes disappear while others stay with us for years. I’ll talk about that in the next article and how it can be a catalyst for incredible momentum.

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