What My PhD Taught Me About Comedy That Stage Time Didn't

5 Helpful Tools (Comedy Mindhacks #51)

Years ago, during my time as a lowly PhD student, I got into the science of “sound mapping.” And I loved it! Believe it or not, I spent years of my life charting Ancient Greek syllables, seeking to detect sound patterns. And if I’m honest, as crazy as it might sound, I think even a practice like that helped me with joke writing and comedy. Many, if not most, comedians discover what’s funny through trial and error on stage. I do, too. But I also discovered it through linguistic analysis in libraries, offices, and classrooms. Both paths can lead to laughs, but they reveal different things about how jokes and humor actually work. Here are 5 things I picked up.

1. Phonetic Patterns Create Comedic Punch

During my PhD coursework, I had to achieve (reading) fluency in six languages. It was required. I suppose I’m a glutton for punishment because, over the course of my academic career, I formally studied twelve languages. That level of language study does something specific to your brain: you start hearing language patterns most people miss. Take this joke, for instance: “I just turned 45; so, I’m finally at that age where… my back goes out more than I do.”

I’ve told that joke on stage several times. However, with a slight rearrangement, it could possibly get a little more punch: “I just turned 45; so, I’m finally at that age where… I go out less than my back.” When I wrote that, I wasn’t just playing with the double meaning of “go out.” I was also tracking the phonetic structures: the hard “ck” in “back,” the “g” in “goes,” the “t” in “out.” As has long been noted,¹ hard consonants at the end of words create punch.

Indeed, it’s a well-known principle in comedy. So, I slightly rearranged it to make the punch end with “back” instead of “do.” In terms of sound, it hits a little harder. However, in terms of processing and, perhaps, euphony (sounding good), I still question whether ending with “do” is better. This is the kind of thing I analyze all the time.

But I didn’t just learn this sorta thing from other comedians. I discovered the importance of sound, as noted above, by analyzing Ancient Greek phonetics at a microscopic level. This helped me see that profanity, in fact, works partly because of this sonic principle. Words ending in hard stops have inherent force. My academic training showed me why, which meant I could apply the same phonetic impact to clean material.

2. Reverse Engineering Thought Patterns

My PhD taught me to reconstruct thought patterns and customs from ancient texts and worlds. Essentially, you read the evidence, identify the pattern, work backwards to understand the logic, then reconstruct. I often write jokes the same way. Sometimes I start with the punchline, “I go out less than my back,” and reverse-engineer until I get a setup.

Most of the time comedians build forward, testing the punch, testing what lands. But building backward comes a little easier when you’ve spent years deconstructing how people think and process information across multiple languages. Linguistic typology, which is what I have 1 of my 3 masters degrees in, is based on the practice of comparing the world’s languages. Doing that for years didn’t just give me linguistic info to work with, it also revealed universal patterns of human cognition. That’s why when I’m constructing a joke, I’m not just playing with English words (though I love doing that). I’m also working with and thinking about fundamental patterns of how humans process information.

3. Ancient Rhetoric as a Systematic Framework

Ancient rhetoric, which I studied in great depth and have even written a textbook on, gave me categories many comedians don’t have but could certainly benefit from. I know that every joke I write, for instance, falls into one of three genres: forensic (proving something), deliberative (changing behavior or thought), or epideictic (praise or blame) rhetoric. That back joke? Epideictic rhetoric! I’m blaming my age for my physical decline. Knowing the rhetorical category before I write can shape how I move forward with or even structure a joke.

Stage time, which is an absolute necessity, teaches you what works. Academic training, however, teaches you why it works and gives you a systematic method to replicate it. When I open an ancient text like the Bible, I have to read it in context. That’s not optional! It’s required. If not, I’ll treat it in a way it should never have been treated. The same discipline applies to every joke I tell at a comedy show.

4. Treating Audiences as Micro-Cultures

Each audience in each venue is a micro-culture. Before I perform, I observe the town, the venue surroundings, the food, the dress, the stores, the homes, the noise levels, the accents, and if possible the local news. Like a linguistic anthropologist, I’m doing fieldwork, and I’m doing it the same way I’d approach studying an ancient community. Most comedians do some version of this intuitively and many are really good at it. But for me, my academic training has made it a non-negotiable.

I know I have to do it, the same way I know I have to read ancient texts in their cultural context. What I’ve noticed when I teach comedy now, is that students resist one thing more than anything else: the hard work of using the method and just sticking to the (sometimes grueling) process. They want comedy to be instinctive. They want to trust their gut. And gut instinct matters, but it’s not enough.

5. Systematic Process Over Pure Instinct

Joke writing takes time, just like all research and writing. Doing my PhD, of course, didn’t teach me to be funny. But it did teach me to be systematic about finding what’s there, reconstructing, and even replicating it. What a gift! Stage time alone would never have given me that framework. (No, I’m not saying academic study replaces stage time.)

I am saying comedians can benefit greatly from both. Stage time teaches timing, delivery, how to read a room in real-time, and how to recover when a joke bombs. All of that’s needed. But my PhD taught me things stage time never could: why certain sounds create impact, how understand rhetorical function and employ rhetorical devices, how to work backwards from punchline to setup or frontwards from the setup to punchline, and how to treat each audience as a distinct culture requiring systematic observation. And it all works because comedy is, at one and the same time, both scientific and artistic. Anyway, my back still goes out more than I do. But now I know exactly why that joke works, and how to write a thousand more just like it.

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1. See: Mencken, H. L. “The Nomenclature of American Place-Names,” in The New Yorker (Nov 8, 1936): 29-32.