{"product_id":"planet-funny","title":"Planet Funny","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eReviews\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe witty and exuberant \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author \u003cb\u003eand record-setting \u003ci\u003eJeopardy!\u003c\/i\u003e champion\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eKen Jennings relays the history of humor in lively, insightful, and crawling with goofy factlings, (Maria Semple, author of \u003ci\u003eWhere'd You Go Bernadette\u003c\/i\u003e)--from fart jokes on clay Sumerian tablets to the latest Twitter gags and Facebook memes.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhere once society's most coveted trait might have been strength or intelligence or honor, today, in a clear sign of evolution sliding off the trails, it is being funny. Yes, funniness. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eConsider: Super Bowl commercials don't try to sell you anymore; they try to make you laugh. Airline safety tutorials--those terrifying laminated cards about the possibilities of fire, explosion, depressurization, and drowning--have been replaced by joke-filled videos with multimillion-dollar budgets and dance routines. Thanks to social media, we now have a whole Twitterverse of amateur comedians riffing around the world at all hours of the day--and many of them even get popular enough online to go pro and take over TV. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn his smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes--pretty darn funny (\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review) \u003ci\u003ePlanet Funny\u003c\/i\u003e, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means--or doesn't--to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python's game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of \u003ci\u003eThe Simpsons\u003c\/i\u003e, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. Fascinating, entertaining and--I'm being dead serious here--important (A.J. Jacobs, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Year of Living Biblically\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003ePlanet Funny\u003c\/i\u003e is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.","brand":"Phoenix Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46610402803881,"sku":"PHBK-9781501100604","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0578\/9899\/1785\/files\/content_0b5364dd-d86b-4d71-9688-36b3f7e5c5a0.jpg?v=1764851743","url":"https:\/\/myti.com\/products\/planet-funny","provider":"Myti","version":"1.0","type":"link"}