Something You Should Know - How Apple Became a $3 Trillion Company & Why We Love to Laugh

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

It is so tempting. The gas pump clicks off indicating that your tank is full but there is that urge to squeeze out a few more drops. Should you? This episode begins by explaining what happens when you do that. ⁠https://cluballiance.aaa.com/the-extra-mile/advice/car/seo-should-you-really-top-off-your-gas-tank⁠ Apple is a huge company worth $3 trillion. It makes money from products (iPhone, computers, smart watch etc.) and services (App store, Apple Pay etc.). Most Apple products are made and assembled in China and the impact Apple has made in China is astonishing and a story you must hear. Here to tell it is Patrick McGee. He was the Financial Times’s principal Apple reporter from 2019 to 2023. Previously, he was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and is now the author of the book ⁠Apple In China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company (https://amzn.to/4cXXwfC).⁠ We love to laugh. We seek it out. We go to comedy clubs and watch funny movies in order to laugh. Why do we do that? What is it about laughter that makes us feel so good? What makes something or someone funny? Joining me for an interesting discussion about this is Jesse David Fox, Senior Editor and comedy critic at Vulture. He also hosts a podcast called ⁠Good One (https://www.vulture.com/good-one)⁠ and he is author of the book, ⁠Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture―and the Magic That Makes It Work (https://amzn.to/4iIRnW5).⁠ All cancer is scary but pancreatic is particularly horrible because it often goes undetected until it is too late – and because no one really knows what causes it. Interestingly, there does seem to be a link between pancreatic cancer and sunlight. Listen as I explain. ⁠https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150430082151.htm⁠ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! CARAWAY: Get 10% off your next purchase, at ⁠https://Carawayhome.com/SYSK⁠ or use code SYSK at checkout. Caraway. Non-Toxic cookware made modern. MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at ⁠https://MintMobile.com/something⁠ ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at ⁠⁠⁠https://FactorMeals.com/something50off⁠⁠⁠ TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure!  Go to ⁠⁠⁠https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today on Something You Should Know, why topping off your tank at the gas station is such a bad idea. Then, the untold story of Apple and how they make so much money beyond phones and computers. Really the money is in the app store, so anytime you buy a digital app, Apple is taking 30%. And then you've got things like Google, pay is Apple $20 billion a year just to have Google the default search engine on every iPhone. Also, the interesting link between sunshine and pancreatic cancer and laughter. What is it that makes something funny and why do we enjoy comedy?

We have comedy because of an evolutionary need to laugh. We laugh probably for the same reasons primates laugh and other animals laugh. Comedy is essentially an outgrowth of that and that has evolved as a way for society to essentially relieve the tensions of existence. All this today on Something You Should Know. We talk a lot about health on something you should know,

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of Mitopure. Go to Timeline.com slash something. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E dot com slash something. Something you should know, fascinating Intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. You know, I keep meaning to remind you that we have, unless you're listening to an ad-free version of this podcast, we have, as you will notice, great sponsors, people we work with closely and vet their products and services and feel very good about them. And I keep meaning to remind you that there are, in the show notes for every episode,

are the promo codes that you can use if you hear a sponsor that sounds interesting and believe me they're all interesting and often they have a promo code where you get a better deal and those promo codes are always in the show notes they're on a website so you can always take advantage of them and I hope you do. Hi welcome to this episode of something you should know. First up, admit it, you have pumped gas in your car after the pump clicks off. You just want to squeeze out those last few drops to fill up the tank as much as possible. Well, it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea for your wallet, your car, and the environment. First of all, it can

spill gasoline onto the ground, which is bad news for the environment because that gasoline has to go somewhere. But topping off damages the onboard refueling vapor recovery system. It's a charcoal canister that collects potentially harmful fuel vapor during the refueling process and then absorbs it using activated carbon. When you saturate those filters by overfilling your tank, that can lead to poor performance, damage to the vehicle, the check engine light will come on, and then you get stuck with totally avoidable repairs.

Also, gas stations are equipped with vapor recovery systems that recover gas that you pump in after the automatic shutoff goes on and that goes back into the gas station's tank. So remember, topping off means you're paying for gas that's going back to the gas station. So for all those reasons, when the pump clicks off by itself, avoid that temptation to squeeze out just a few more drops. And that is something you should know. There is a 50-50 chance, here in the US anyway, there's a 50-50 chance that your smartphone is an Apple iPhone.

And or maybe you have an Apple computer or an Apple watch or something Apple. Apple is a big company. They make a lot of things. They have an almost cult-like following. Your iPhone, if you have one, was most likely made or assembled in China. Almost all Apple products are made and assembled in China. iPhones, iPads, and many MacBooks are assembled there. Some

of it is done in India and Vietnam and here in the US, but China is the big player. We are about to take a very interesting and very different look at Apple than you have ever heard before. With Patrick McGee, he was the Financial Times principal Apple reporter from 2019 to 2023. Previously, he was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and he's written a book called Apple in China, the capture of the world's greatest company. Hi Patrick, thanks for coming on something you should know. Thanks so much Mike. So you could probably take three hours to answer this question, but I'm hoping you don't. What is Apple?

What makes Apple Apple? Why is it such this shiny thing on the hill that everybody bows to? What is it about Apple? I love that question. OK, so nuanced answer. On the one hand, you could say China makes Apple Apple. I mean, there is no country on the planet remotely capable of offering the same combination

of cost, quantity, skill, expertise to make a quarter billion iPhones a year, let alone every other device. The nuanced answer is that China is capable of that because China has been the sole recipient of Apple's huge investment over the last 25 years in making those technologies possible. So China isn't just the world leader in the world's electronics. It's the world leader because Apple taught them how to do that over an investment period that's so consequential, I compare it to a geopolitical event like the fall of the Berlin

wall but it's one we don't know about because where all the action was happening, China, there's a censored media landscape and all the main actors on the Apple side are stricken by NDAs so they can't really talk about what they've been doing. Well, that certainly brings up a lot of questions, but before I ask those about China, let's go back further to the beginning of what made Apple Apple. And a lot of people point to Steve Jobs as the reason he is the driving force of that company or was. Do you buy that? Absolutely. Apple was founded in 1976 by two guys named Steve in a garage.

And the ethos at the time is that you build your own computers. And so Apple sets up factories in places like California and in the early 1980s, Singapore and Ireland, because at a sort of continental level, they want to have local production. IBM really upends the game in 1981 when they invent the IBM PC and then the PC clone industry, of course, totally follows in their footsteps. And there's nothing special about the IBM PC in terms of what it can do for you, the usability, like any of the things that Steve Jobs loved. What they did is they sort of declared war on Apple and others through, let's say, the mundane business things, logistics, manufacturing, distribution.

And so all these sort of boring things that Steve Jobs didn't necessarily care about became foundational for bringing PCs to an affordable price and relying on sort of an emerging global, interchangeable part supply chain that very much is first founded in places like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. And then by the time Apple is adopting the strategy out of sheer desperation in 1996, China

is just beginning to become a major player. So that's the sort of quick and dirty history, and we can go into any more detail as you'd like. But originally, Apple was a personal computer company. That's what their first product was, was selling personal computers, yeah? Yep. And they were made here, were they not?

Any Mac that you would have bought in the 1980s and for most of the 1990s, if you bought it in America, it was made here. If you bought it in Europe, it was made in Ireland. If you bought it in Asia, it was made in Singapore by Apple. By Apple, not contracted out. That all changed when? So this is a bit of history that nobody really knows.

In 1996, a year before Steve Jobs comes back from a 12-year exile to save the company, Apple is in crisis, near bankruptcy. They hired a Chapter 11 bankruptcy lawyer, and they were days away from not being able to meet payroll. At the time, they had 13,000 employees, and they had so little cash that it wasn't going to be able to meet payroll. At the time they had 13,000 employees and they had so little cash that it wasn't going to be able to happen. So they had to sell a computer factory they owned in Colorado, Fountain, Colorado, and that gives them about $200 million and buys them

a little bit of time. And in the next months, they're able to renegotiate some loans with Japanese lenders. They are able to sell about $600 million in an oversubscribed bond sale. And, you know, they haven't fixed anything in terms of having a hit product. But in the wake of Windows 95 sort of dominating the landscape, they've at least bought themselves a little bit of time. And so the CEO at the time is a guy named Gil Amelio. He only lasts 500 days. He's always been considered the wrong guy for the job. And I think he was, he wasn't very charismatic. He wasn't a product guy, but he did three major things. One is the selling of the Colorado Fountain factory

because that initiates a global outsourcing strategy. So for the first time, Apple for its computers begins making them through contract manufacturers, which is big savings. It financially goes through the bond maneuvers that I just mentioned. And the third most important thing is he realizes the software operating system

needs a massive reboot. And through that, he brings back Steve Jobs by acquiring Next Computer, the jobs-owned company that was really itself on the brink. And yet there was a perfect match made in heaven between Apple and Next. I don't know anyone that has the insight you do into this. And I've always wondered.

And I just, the image, there are plenty of companies that do things and build stuff in China and have a history and all that. But there's something about Apple that just is so, I don't know, untouchable, so magnificent, so in so many people's eyes. I mean, how many other companies do people line up outside the store for days to get a watch?

I mean, it's just it. What is that? Absolutely. So I like to ask people, what was your favorite Dell computer from the early 2000s? Right. So I like to ask people, what was your favorite Dell computer from the early 2000s? You can't even name one. Whereas we could have a real argument for an hour about whether the G4 Cube, this amazing cube-shaped computer was the best.

Was it the candy-colored iMac? Was it the tangerine-colored iMac? Was it the sunflower iMac that looked like a sunflower and sort of had an anthropomorphic feel to it? I mean, Apple was just doing designs that nobody else was even contemplating. It's not like HP was coming up with designs and we didn't like them. They just didn't even care about design. So I make this big distinction because Apple is actually kind of late in terms of going to China. Everybody's doing it at that stage and they don't really consolidate into China until 2003. I think that's a fair bit

later than people think. So the candy colored iMac, for instance, and really nobody knows this, it was built by LG in South Korea. And when it was a big success, LG set up factories in Mexicali, Mexico and Wales of all places. Foxconn, a company people associate with Apple, then comes on board, but they don't just sort of consolidate everything into China. They build it in China, in the Czech Republic, and in Fullerton, California. So the distinction I would make is Dell, HP, the PC clones, they're all moving to China because of what is possible. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, What is available there? And Apple is moving because of what's possible. What they realize is that Johnny Ive, the chief designer, can come up with anything,

and armies of abundant and cheap laborers in China will work on a conveyor belt assembly system to conjure it into reality in massive scale and at fat margins. So everybody's going there for cost savings. Apple is moving to China for unconstrained design possibilities. The cost savings are there.

They're baked in, but they're not the primary reason. That's two very different ways of getting there, isn't it? Oh, I think it's absolutely instrumental to the company. So when Steve Jobs comes back, he doesn't know who Johnny Ive is. That's not someone he hires. Johnny Ive's already there. The first time they meet, Steve Jobs plans on firing him, and Johnny Ive has his own resignation letter in his pocket. Instead, they completely hit it off. And what Steve Jobs recognizes is that Johnny Ive is a brilliant designer, but he maybe at the time

wasn't a brilliant communicator of his own worth. So the rest of the company, the higher ups before Steve Jobs came on, never really allowed him to go wild with his designs. So they were creating pretty boring computers in 1997, and Steve Jobs realizes the potential of what Johnny Ive is capable of. And that's where the iMac comes out. And that really is the product that saves the company. Now they're still in crisis multiple years later because of the dot-com boom and some other items

and then you could say the iPod is the company that really saves them and of course that leads to the iPhone but at the time it certainly was the case that Apple was going to go under if the iMac wasn't a hit and it becomes America's best-selling computer. We're talking about Apple, its incredible success and its relationship to China. My guest is Patrick McGee, author of the book Apple in China, the capture of the world's greatest company. We had a guest on a while ago, I'll never forget, he talked about how much plastic we all consume and the estimate is about a credit card's worth of plastic per week. Now, that plastic comes from a lot of sources, and a big one is the cookware we use, as well as cutting boards and food storage containers.

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It's the ultimate kitchen setup and it will save you money versus buying the items individually. Plus, if you visit carawayhome.com slash sysk, you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners, so visit carawayhome.com slash sysk or use code sysk at checkout. Caraway, non-toxic cookware made modern. I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host Unspool,

the podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-sees and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight. So if you love movies like critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees and in case you missed them, we're talking Parasite the Home Alone from Grease to the Dark Knight. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unschooled wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to hit the follow button. So Patrick, Apple has this customer loyalty, customer fan, customer, I don't know what you call it. Was that like, yeah, it's cult like, is that by design?

Did they work at that or is that a byproduct of all this other stuff you're talking about? Oh, that's a great question. No, I would say that's in the DNA of Steve Jobs because there's a time in the early eighties when the Apple two is doing incredibly well and Steve Jobs is upset that all these third party companies are making money off of what he thinks of as his creation, right? So Apple does things like the OS, but it's not the company making Lotus Rider, if you can remember an app like that. And so Steve Jobs is ambivalent at best about this relationship where Apple is sort of the platform and then you've got software companies making money off selling the software, you know, the real features, the killer apps that you actually use the computer for, as well as hardware.

I mean, if, if, if Apple comes out with a computer, you know, people making keyboards, people making speakers, all sorts of hardware peripherals begin to make money. And Steve Jobs is always ambivalent about that, including when the iPhone is built, because it's everybody else at Apple who thinks we need to have an app store. And Steve Jobs, at least in the early stages, basically wants to have very few external apps. Google Maps was one of the early ones, but he wanted Apple to control that ecosystem. So the control of software and hardware and services is totally integral to Apple today. And it has been since the founding days in a garage. And that really is the DNA of Steve Jobs. And according to the legend, and maybe it's just legend, or maybe it is so, and you would probably know, Steve Jobs is the heart and soul of Apple that he is Apple.

Absolutely. And the company without him basically lost its innovative spirit, lost its soul, if you will. It's raised in Detra. And by 1996, it is nearly totally failed. And the reason it survives is Gil Amelio brings back Steve Jobs. And what I think reporters, media, analysts have totally missed is that there's too much history of Apple product design, product marketing, how the things work, product reviews,

and we've completely ignored how Apple makes its products. And that is so foundational to its success that when Steve Jobs dies, who gets made CEO? The head of operations. So the company knows better than anybody else that what they're capable of in China is, you know, the defining feature that allows the company to become a $3 trillion company today. And yet, I think we in the media have totally failed to understand this narrative. And so what I sort of flip on its head is that Apple wasn't just exploiting workers in China.

Beijing was allowing Apple to exploit workers in China so that China could in turn exploit Apple. I mean, I get it. Apple's a big company and they make a lot of things and they have stores in lots of nice malls and whatnot. They're so big because of what? Well, the genius of Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive is what made Apple products unique.

But it's the genius of Tim Cook and Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn, that made Apple products so ubiquitous. So when Steve Jobs dies in 2011, having Tim Cook become the CEO is sort of a decade long signal that we don't really need to be building another device that comes after the iPhone. We just need to take our existing creations, iPhone, MacBook, iPad, and scale them globally, ship them globally. scale them globally, ship them globally. So, you know, something like the iPhone goes from fewer than five million units in 2007

to 230 million units by 2015. These are the annual figures, right? So scale is the hidden force, the, you know, the unheralded secret sauce of Apple, but 90% of it is all in China. But Apple is worth so much money because of electronic devices that it sells. Is it any other business? I mean, because people will tell you, you know, McDonald's doesn't make money off hamburgers,

they make money off the real estate that the restaurants are on. Is there kind of a similar formula? Or Apple is what it is. It's selling phones and computers, and that's why we make so much money. So more than 50% of revenue is the iPhone alone. And then when you add in the other hardware products that we can all name and recognize from AirPods to Macs,

that gets towards 75 75 to 80%. And the remaining 20% is a fairly new development and that's called services. Now they're important because when, when Apple sells hardware, it's making about 35% gross margin, which is to say if someone spends $100 on some Apple products,

Apple takes $35 as profit. That's already really high. Services, they make 75% profit. Now, some of the services you would think, you would know, which is like Apple Music, the fitness offerings that they have, Apple News. That's almost none of it. Really the money is in the app store.

So anytime you buy a digital app through any, through, you know, through the app store that has, I think, 2 million apps, Apple's taking 15, but more usually 30%. And then you've got things like Google pay is Apple $20 billion a year. Basically this is pure profit just to have Google, the default search engine on every iPhone. And there are, I think 1.3 billion iPhones existing in the wild. So it's all about the iPhone.

Even if not all the money is coming from hardware revenue, it's software revenue that's generated off of the iPhone. So where's Apple headed? And is AI like a thing for Apple? Is that like a big shiny thing, the object, to look at for them? Or they're making phones and computers? No, it should be.

But they're flailing. I mean, they're basically dealing with a lawsuit right now because last June, they introduced a bunch of AI features. I don't mean introduced in terms of in a product. I mean, they showed off what they would have. And they were supposed to have some of them by September, so for the new iPhone 16. And then basically all of, they showed off what they would have and they were supposed to have some of them by September. So for the new iPhone 16 and then basically all of what they showed was supposed to be available within a few months.

Now we're in May and the features still don't exist. So they were telling you to go buy the new phone with Apple intelligence. That's Apple's version of AI for features that don't exist and won't exist for at least another few months and possibly up to a year. So they're not really doing well in the AI race. However, they have the hardware and the software and the operating system all in the one device, right? So if I say to ChatTPT, hey, ChatTPT, go into my email and figure out what my mom told me last week

and remind me what that was or whatever. ChatTPT is not allowed to do that, right? It's not allowed to leave its own app, as it were, and search your phone for information. Siri is allowed to do that. So even though Apple's behind in the AI race, it has an ability, um, that it will not give to any other customers because, or any other competitors, because Apple can say for privacy reasons, we're not going to allow any apps to go through your own personal data,

but Siri basically already has that access. Wow, I hadn't thought of that, but that's pretty amazing. I mean, that's quite a leg up. Yeah, I mean, it's a monopoly, but not necessarily an illegal monopoly. I mean, they own the operating system and they have for a long time. So they can do things with the operating system

that nobody else can do. To give a couple other examples of this, if you want to do wireless payment, you have to use Apple Pay. There are other digital wallets, but they're not allowed on the iPhone. Well, that seems like a monopoly, doesn't it? Well, only if you have an Apple phone, though.

If you don't have an Apple phone, maybe you can use those other apps, right? Yeah, so look, I've never thought the antitrust argument against Apple is very good. But people that complain about this, legally or just on a social media platform, will sort of define the market as the 1.3 billion iPhones, right?

Whereas when Apple would define the market, they would define it as the existing world of smartphones. And in that sense, they only have a 20% market share. Actually, I think that's a pretty reasonable defense. Well, that surprises me. And I had read that somewhere recently, that Apple's share of smartphones is a lot smaller than I think most people believe.

Yeah, it is 50% in America. But that's its biggest market. It has never been more than 20% globally. But here's the craziest statistic, and I promise you some crazy statistics. Apple earns about 85% of industry revenue for smartphones globally. So find me another industry where a minority player commands

virtually all the profits in the whole industry. What I find so astonishing from the things you say and write about that Apple has been in China for so long, doing so much that Apple has changed China and that Apple has been training people to make electronics in China so well that now China makes really good electronics themselves that are not Apple electronics. Apple has been providing China training for so long that it is not clear the Chinese industry

there still needs Apple. So what I would point to is that if you're able to get your phones on the latest, sorry, if you're able to get your hands on the latest Huawei, Oppo, Vivo phones, you will be holding in your hands, phones that are better made than what Apple currently does. Now, again, that might sound a little bit nuts and you can't buy these phones for the most part in America, but for instance, the Huawei Mate XT is a phone that is a little bit thicker than an iPhone, but it unfolds twice into a 10.2 inch tablet, which is the standard size of an iPad Apple's supposed to have something like that in

2027 well This is quite a story that the relationship between Apple and China that as you point out hasn't been written about or talked about much Patrick McGee's been my guest He is author of a book called Apple in China, the capture of the world's greatest company. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Patrick, thanks for coming on and telling this story. Alright, thanks Mike. Breaking news, a brand new game is now live at bet three six five. Introducing Prize Matcher, a daily game that's never ordinary. All you have to do is match as many tiles as you can, and the more you match, the better.

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Z's apply. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast Disney Countdown. I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And I'm the dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Who doesn't like to laugh? Laughter brings us a sense of joy and happiness, even if it's only for a few moments. It is so pleasurable and it connects us with other people. We like people who can make us laugh. And we like to laugh so much that we seek out comedy

to make us laugh more, to force that feeling because it feels so good. What is comedy? Is it magic? Is it an art form? What makes something funny? And what makes some people funnier than others? Well, here to delve into this is Jesse David Fox. He's senior editor and comedy critic at Vulture. He hosts the podcast, Good One,

where he interviews comedians about their comedy process. And he's author of a book called Comedy Book how comedy conquered culture and the magic that makes it work. Hey Jesse welcome. Oh thank you so much for having me. Hey so why do we have comedy? Do we know? What itch does it scratch? What does it do for us? What why is it? We have comedy because of an evolutionary need to laugh that existed before humans existed. Like, we laugh probably for the same reasons

primates laugh and other animals laugh, which is a sort of way of communicating you're in a playful state and a way for relieving tension in specific moments. You know, if you're play fighting with another gorilla, you're a gorilla in this example if you're play fighting with another gorilla, you're a gorilla in this example, you're playing fighting with another gorilla, you would laugh to be like, we're having fun here.

Comedy is essentially an outgrowth of that. And that has evolved as a way for society to essentially relieve the tensions of existence. One of the things about it that I've always found fascinating is how you could sit alone in a room and watch a movie or something really funny and not laugh much. But it's when other people are with you

that it becomes a collective laugh that that makes it funnier. So yeah, I mean, it really is like laughter is essentially a form of communication. It is a social phenomenon. Henri Bergson in his very influential book about the, you know, about comedy theory, it's called Laughter, an Essay on the Meeting of the Comic. He talks about how our laughter is always the laughter of a group that our laughter needs an echo. We need the state of being with other people

to really feel the need to communicate laughter opposed to just sort of like appreciate that comedy is happening. Do we know, I mean, obviously things have probably been funny for as long as people have been around, but when it actually kind of became a thing, like, like, this is comedy. It essentially started happening before people realized that's what it was.

Like, obviously there have been comedic plays and in many ways what we think of comedy somewhat outgrew that and somewhat outgrew of minstrel shows in the 19th century. But really what we think of comedy as a distinct art form opposed to comedy as people being on stage telling stock jokes that everyone has really started happening in the way that we think of it in the 1950s, where comedians were taking more ownership and more authorship over the material they were doing. And the audience was expecting that. They were going to hear and see the perspective of the specific comedian. And though it's unclear when the actual term stand-up started, people were essentially doing something then closer to what we think of. Where before that time period, though people were telling jokes,

it feels like almost like a different thing and more like an outgrowth of the fact that people in general tell jokes. Comedy, it seems to me, because you can look back at an old comedy, has gotten so much more sophisticated and more at least it evolves because you can look back at stuff from the 50s and 60s and it's just not funny

But it was then but it's not now Comedy is so context dependent in ways That's almost hard to understand to you know in some ways you see a person standing on stage It's like well How could anyone ever have thought this was funny? But, you know, a lot of these jokes demand a sort of connection between the comedian and the audience at the time. And they're sort of talking the same language and they're pulling from same reference points. And that is essentially what creates what we think of as funny.

It is a sort of a relationship between the comedy being created and the audience. When you're watching it now, you do not have that same relationship. so you don't sort of feel the same way towards the comedian on stage that they didn't. And we are so used to, as you said, more sophisticated, you know, often faster in some ways, less broad forms of comedy, and then societal norms change, right? So it's like, there's lots of people like to say like, oh, you can't say that anymore. And yeah, of course, like you just wouldn't say a thing that people have already been saying,

but like language evolves and comedians evolve and we sort of are, we want our comedians to sort of really reflect the world that we're living in. And that's the beauty of the art, you know, then that's the beauty of the art form is its ability to reflect the moment we're living in. But the negative of that is, you know, when you're the beauty of the art form, is its ability to reflect the moment we're living in. But the negative of that is, you know, when you're no longer in the moment,

it does not hit the same way. This might be an impossible question to answer, but give it a shot. Sure. There are lots of really good comedians, lots of very funny people, but then there are these standouts, Richard Pryor, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, people that just seem to be head and shoulders

above everybody else, at least in terms of their success, maybe not in terms of their funny, but why do you suppose, what is it about them that catapults them higher than others? I subscribe to a theory of comedy called play theory, which is essentially comedy outgrows, is an outgrowth of our desire to sort of play, play with language, play with other people. And so as a result, the relationship a comedian is able to create with his audience is that of essentially a friendship. It's not the exact same thing, but the way you laugh with your friends, the comedian essentially is able to artificially create that same bond. And the comedians who are really successful represent a feeling of trust, represent a feeling of friendship. They feel like that's how in that culture at that exact moment, and really speak to it in almost an acute way, and people go to them for that specific service. And it's like, you know, Jerry Seinfeld's example was sort of like,

his focus on sort of mundane objects was, it was a time where people were processing like the moment in civilization or moment in our society where we were thinking about Commercialization and and mass production and Focusing a little bit more on the products that are now part of our life and Jerry sort of spoke to that moment now there were other comedians doing observational comedy at the time Jerry became popular, but There were other comedians doing observational comedy at the time Jerry became popular, but Clearly there just is some sort of special thing about how his brain processed it, you know, I remember I did stand up years ago for a little while and

never I couldn't stand the lifestyle of that but it was fun and and and I became somewhat of a student of it. And I remember seeing Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno in concert at a club. And I was so impressed by how yet it looks so easy and yet there is such a rhythm and an art form and a science to it that you walk out of there and your stomach hurts. And they do it in a way where you're laughing and then they give you a little break

and then you're laughing again and then you get a little break. And it kind of jumped out at me as I witnessed it and realized there is a real, to the guys who are at the top, there is such a science to it, as well as art, that just floors me. I mean, it just, it is so enjoyable to watch.

Yeah, I mean, especially those guys are seeing the sort of science of it in particular and really thinking about how to maximize impact of the material they have. And I think how Jerry sees is essentially you're having a conversation, but you're the only one talking, right? And that is very specific to sort of the American style, which is more conversational. So what he's able to do is make it feel like you're talking to the audience and that you're talking with the audience but have things that are so prepared but

never lose the illusion that is being made up on the spot. It is actually one of the more complicated things for any comedian really to do is to convey that this is the first time you're saying something that you clearly have had to have said like over and over again for 10 years. It's, you know, it's almost like a performance thing, which is like you have to be able to, like an actor, be attached to the truth of the joke when you wrote it and you have to be able to convey that sort of fun to the audience. And then also think about like, okay, like a pollster, like a statistician, like a scientist, you clock the reception.

You then think about, is there a way to get the reception a little bit more, a little bit less? You then, I'm sure Jerry Seinfeld, I don't know if he'll literally do this, but I'm sure when he puts together a set, his brain has an image, that's almost like a sound wave of like, it's gonna go like this. And it's like, I should do a longer joke here

because the audience might be exhausted from laughing too much. Talk about political correctness and it seems like, and there were complaints about how that was having a real dampening effect on comedy, that you couldn't talk about things you used to be able to talk about because someone might get offended.

I push back on the idea a bit. I understand the argument for talking about certain subjects. One, comedy is a place you can do that. So to deprive comedy of that does seem like a disservice. Also, it is freeing to be in a space where there is not the sort of tightness that we experience in the rest of our lives. That said, if political correctness is hampering comedy right now over the last 10, 15 years, no one mentioned that to comedians and comedy audiences in so much as it's never been more popular. There's never been more comedians of more types having more success than right now, the time where people are hypothetically too sensitive.

That said, language evolves. There are so many words that we do not say that were said 50 years ago. They're not all offensive words. You know, if a comedian started calling marijuana grass on stage, the audience would not like it now. And they call marijuana grass? Sure, it just will date the comedian. Ultimately, I go back to this, which is the idea that, like,

you know, some people complain about audiences being too sensitive, but as a person who really wants to push comedy as an art form and to both make it grow in art form and to even convey to people that it is in art form, that demands an audience that is invested, that is sensitive, that cares about the quality of it. If you're a good enough comedian, it's not a problem. The biggest comedians in the world generally say what they're trying to say, and if they can't get the audience on board with it, that is not the audience's fault. The job of the comedian is to

figure out how to communicate what they want to say in a way in which the audience will receive it. If you are saying it in a way and the audience does not receive it, then that is a failure of doing the job of communicating, of doing the job as an artist. What about the business of comedy? And what I mean is that comedy clubs seem to be really big in the 80s. And then it seemed to kind of fade away a little bit. I mean, there's always been comedy clubs since then, but it was big in the 80s and then it kind of died off. But you had mentioned earlier that there are more comedians today. And so where is the business?

Generally, the comedy boom of that really peaked in the 80s, petered out sometime in the sort of mid 90s. And there's a variety of reasons for it. There was a lot of comedy clubs that did not necessarily have the highest standards in terms of who they're putting on stage. And you had an audience who kind of was just going to whatever comedy club was around because comedy was kind of a hot new thing to do, to go to comedy clubs in that way. The comedy club was still a fairly recent phenomenon.

So that sort of petered out. And then through the course of the 90s and the aughts, a new type of relationship was being developed between comedian and the audience. And then that was supercharged by podcasting and social media, which is more and more audiences are going to see a comedian they want to see. They are not just going to consume comedy because it's Friday night. And they're not just going to consume comedy because they are home from work and they want to laugh so they're just put on Comedy Central and whatever is there, they'll watch.

And instead you have something which is more, you're going to see specific people do a specific type of comedy that you already like, and you have already become invested into them as a comedian, you're already familiar with your work, you've been following how their tour has developed on social media in one way or the other, and it's been huge for comedy clubs because comedy clubs were really kind of just passively hoping people would just show up because it's Friday night and they wanted to see comedy. Or more so, comedy clubs were reliant on giving away free tickets in spaces near them, hoping people will show up and then buy alcohol, not caring about ticket sales and not caring about if the comedian has a good experience.

So it's been really exciting because you're having comedy fans in a different way than has ever existed. And it's been really great for the business. And then you see it grow and grow to a point where you know before 1990 I think you know the amount of comedians who played Madison Square Garden was so limited and then now it is a regular place for a lot of comedians to play or Or a lot of different types of comedians to play and then you just go down to Radio City So many different comedians can play Radio City Music Hall, which is a 5,000 seat venue, Chicago Theater, which is, I think, a 3,000-whatever seat venue.

And that's because comedians now have their own fans that are also fans of comedy, but that reshapes the business. And I think that is ultimately for the better. Because in the previous model, you essentially had all audiences hoping all comedians essentially do whatever they think comedy is. And the comedians essentially in a service industry of providing the idea of stand-up comedy to these people. And now it's different. Now they're much more like artists, where people are coming to see their perspective, point of view, their way in which they express themselves. And for really all types of stand-up comedy, but this is also the case for some sketch comedians and people whose podcasting is sort of the main medium

which they express themselves, there is just like a much deeper, more thoughtful relationship in terms of what the audience expects from the comedians they follow. What do you think the future of comedy is? I mean, it's clearly evolved and changed and of course predicting the future is a pretty iffy business, but take a stab at it. Where do you think it's going? Sure, yeah. You know, the thing about comedy is it's so adapted to new technology. So in some ways you're asking me,

where do I see the future of technology? And clearly what we'll have to develop over the next 10, 15 years is how comedians could have social video or video careers that then builds into something more robust in terms of the live experience. I think what has happened currently is with new technologies in terms of Instagram video and TikTok, comedians are figuring out how to sort

of game the system, how to create content out of the live space. As technology develops, I think comedians will sort of learn how to be true with honoring the live moment and being present in the live moment, but also understanding that a sort of parallel career will exist online in some way. But like ultimately, you know, as I said, there was a stand-up comedy boom in the 1980s. And then, in I think 2009, I said there's a sort of second comedy boom. And the truth is, that is 16 years ago. It's hard to argue something is a boom when it is been going for 16 years and not slowing down.

And then you see the tremendous influence comedians are having, more so than I ever imagined, even when I wrote the book a couple years ago. And yet, it will kind of look the same. It still will be a person on stage with a stool and a microphone and a glass of water, or improv is still a group of people and four chairs on stage and that's like what I go back to it's like it all these things change and language changes but like ultimately people are doing the same things and like what changes is like the part of their brains where the magic happens and

comedy is produced well as much as I enjoy looking at and dissecting the elements of comedy, sometimes I really don't want to do that. I just want to enjoy it. Like you can look at it too closely and sometimes it's just fun to laugh. I've been speaking with Jesse David Fox. He is a senior editor and comedy critic at Vulture. His podcast is called Good One and the name of his book

is Comedy Book, How Comedy Conquered Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Jesse, thanks for coming on here today. Oh, thank you so much. It was a real pleasure. All cancer is scary and pancreatic cancer is really scary. One big reason is that people often don't discover it until it's too late to do anything and the other scary thing is no one really knows why people get it. But research at UC San Diego discovered a link between sunlight and pancreatic cancer. It seems

that people in countries with weak sunlight have a higher incidence of pancreatic cancer. Weak sunlight is due to considerable cloud cover or high latitude meaning far from the equator. It seems that with weak sunlight your body cannot produce a lot of vitamin D and that's that vitamin D deficiency which may be a risk factor for pancreatic cancer. The researchers discovered that people who live in sunny countries near the equator have only one-sixth the incident rate of pancreatic cancer as those who live far from the equator. The importance of sunlight deficiency strongly suggests, but doesn't prove, but suggests

that the vitamin D deficiency may contribute to the risk of pancreatic cancer. While you can get vitamin D from your diet, experts say most people also require additional vitamin D to be produced by the body when skin is directly exposed to sunlight. Skin exposed to sunshine indoors through a window will not produce vitamin D. Cloudy skies, shade, and dark-colored skin also reduce vitamin D production. And that is Something You Should Know. Something You Should Know is produced by Jennifer Brennan, Jeff Havison, and the executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Herr-Rothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You

Should Know. From the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time through the sapphic history that shaped them comes a brand new season of cruising beyond the bars. This is your host Sarah Gabrielli and I've spent the past year interviewing history-making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more. For 11 years, every night women slept illegally on the common. We would move down to the West Indies to form a lesbian nation.

Meg Christen coined the phrase women's music, but she would have liked to say it was lesbian music. And that's kind of the origins of the Convihuguer collective. You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday starting February 4th. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa DeMonts, for Don't Blame Me,

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