{"id":1807,"date":"2026-02-06T08:13:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T12:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/?p=1807"},"modified":"2026-02-06T08:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T12:21:17","slug":"teaching-the-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/06\/teaching-the-funny\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching the Funny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I have found that there&#8217;s a tension between the mechanics of humor, a free roaming curiosity that helps an individual (or a group of&#8217;em) explore the world for material, and the tangible execution of comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>You can teach the mechanics.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You can&#8217;t teach a free roaming curiosity, but you can encourage and nurture it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You can teach execution styles of comedy, but you cannot execute for other people. You can certainly collaborate and create. It&#8217;s a creative process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I think the old adage of &#8220;You can lead a horse to water, but you can&#8217;t make them drink.&#8221; applies to many aspects of life, including humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if someone knows the mechanics, has a free roaming curiosity, and understands the style of various comedy creative mediums, it doesn&#8217;t mean that they will create something that is funny. Just ask anyone who creates comedy and is successful in the past getting laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not everything they produce is funny.  And that&#8217;s OK.  The key is to keep finding water to drink from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have found that there&#8217;s a tension between the mechanics of humor, a free roaming curiosity that helps an individual (or a group of&#8217;em) explore&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232,52,67,213],"tags":[237],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-ideas","category-theatre","category-writing","tag-humor","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1809,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions\/1809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybaiel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}