anxiety

"The paradox of the podcast explosion among comics is that it’s at once a minirenaissance for comedy and a retreat by comics further into themselves — a sort of talking cure for a group of people who suffer from something not yet covered, I don’t believe, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: a need, when not formally doing comedy, to talk about how and why one does comedy."

Paul Brownfield, writing in today's New York Times, is talking about a trend he's noticed lately: podcasts by comics that aren't meant to be funny.

Rather, these downloadable and on-demand audio shows, such as Paul Gilmartin's "The Mental Illness Happy Hour, "play(s) to the trope that all comedians are in actuality broken people who are willing to expose their brokenness for our light amusement." Gilmartin and his guests set aside the jokes to talk about mental illness, addiction, and depression.

Read more today in the New York Times here.