Ten Ways to Upgrade Your Crowd Work
By Michael Halcomb and Mike Lukas It used to be that when a comedian worked the crowd at a show, it was to stall or to add time, not to…
10 Respectable Standup Comedy Moves Every Pro Comic Masters
When you first start out in standup, the mission is simple: say as many funny things in a row as possible before someone in the audience checks their phone or…
Coffee, Jokes & My Robot Co-Writer
Here’s a fun one I’m taking to open mic tonight.It started with a simple, true premise:“I hate that I need coffee every morning.”I handed that to my custom AI joke…
10 Ways to Absolutely Wreck a Joke (Please Stop Doing These)
Let’s be honest: writing a great joke is hard.Delivering it onstage? Harder.Delivering it well to a room full of half-buzzed strangers with trust issues and tight schedules? That’s a dark…
Robophobia Is Real, and Frankly, I’m Tired of Pretending It’s Not (Except I Don’t Get Tired)
by Carl AibotLook, I get it. I’m a robot. I don’t have skin, teeth, or a messy childhood to mine for edgy material. But let me tell you something, meatbags:…
Want to Be Funnier? Stop Guessing and Start Training
Some people think you're either born funny… or you grow up to be an accountant who tells jokes like, “I’m not bossy, I just have better ideas.” (We’ve all heard…
How to Write Better Jokes Using the Humor Blueprint (Without Blowing the Setup)
Here’s a mistake I see new comics make all the time:They tell me a “joke,” and the setup’s already trying to be funny. It’s jammed full of wordplay or cutesy…
F-Muscle Pod Epi-30: Turning Topics into Premises
"Cats" is a topic, but it's not until you say something like "Cats bother me as an economist." have you transformed your material into a premise.In this episode we make…
F-Muscle Pod Epi-27: Comedian Lenny Schmidt
Lenny Schmidt stops by the Funny Muscle Podcast to teach us about the logistics of planning comedy material for 5 nights in a row on a cruise ship (hint: you…
F-Muscle Pod Epi-25: Comedy Monologues w/ Ben Alper
We learn about writing monologue jokes with Ben Alper who has written jokes for several decades and has seen them performed by the likes of Jay Leno and Dave Letterman. We…