Planet Funny

Scribner Books, May 2018

Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture takes readers on a wry, witty, downright LOL journey through the history of humor—from fart jokes on clay Sumerian tablets all the way up to the latest Twitter gags and Facebook memes—to tell the story of how comedy came to rule the modern world.

It happened so gradually that we didn't even notice: everything got funny. Fifty years ago, "Don't use humor in advertising" was an axiom on Madison Avenue. Now the average American sees two hundred funny media ads per day. "You must be solemn as an ass" was the bedrock of conventional political wisdom for centuries. Now, a generation gets its news from comedy satire shows and political candidates hire joke writers to craft zingers for debates. Newspaper headlines and church marquees, once fairly staid affairs, must now be "clever," stuffed with puns and winks. 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terrifying laminated cards about the possibilities of fire, explosion, depressurization, and drowning—have been replaced by joke-filled videos with multimillion-dollar budgets and dance routines.

We are living in a golden age of comedy and funniness is paramount. In Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn't—to be funny in it now. Here, he traces the evolution of humor in our culture and takes the pulse of our joke-saturated time, revealing the untold story of how we got to this point and exploring what it might mean to live in a post-serious world.

Pre-order Planet Funny online from a selection of fine retailers.

Signed and personalized copies of Planet Funny (as well as of all Ken's other books) can be ordered nationwide from Seattle's Phinney Books. Contact Phinney Books for more information.

Read Excerpts

From Chapter 1: Our Funny Century
From Chapter 2: Funny for No Reason
From Chapter 9: A Blurry Amorphous Thud

Praise for Planet Funny

"This book is full of good sense and meaningful interviews, and it would be difficult to find a smarter or more satisfying treatment of a subject so evanescent and idiosyncratic as comedy."

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Jennings's remarkable research and clever hand make an impressive and highly entertaining work that pop culture enthusiasts will not want to miss."

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Jennings' holistic, incisive argument presents a strong case that our comedy-first culture is resulting in too much of a good thing. In a punchy, engaging style, he documents humor's history, evolution, and twentieth-century explosion. . . . Planet Funny is smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny."

Booklist

"When did comedy become so serious and the daily news become so laughable? In his latest book, Ken Jennings provides excellent insight in detailing how comedy has infiltrated every corner of contemporary American culture—for better or for worse. Planet Funny is an illuminating take on that old cliché: 'Everybody's a comedian.'"

Kliph Nesteroff, author of The Comedians

"Ken Jennings has done the impossible: he's written an actually funny book about comedy. Ken is brilliant and incisive and the kind of guy with so many smarts that it makes you go, 'Man, that guy's really smart.' Fans of comedy will love Planet Funny and will undoubtedly wonder why I am not mentioned more."

Michael Ian Black, comedian

"Ken Jennings hops aboard our thundering avalanche of comedy and surfs it like a pro. Lively, insightful, and crawling with goofy factlings, Planet Funny is for the comedy geek in all of us."

Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

"America's biggest brain turns his attention to modern comedy—and delivers a book full of humor and insight. As a reader, I'm delighted...and as a comedy writer, I'm annoyed that he understands my field better than I do. Stay off my turf, Jennings!"

Tim Long, writer/producer, The Simpsons

"This book is fascinating, entertaining and—I'm being dead serious here—important. The joke-ification of our world affects everything: politics, science, art, literature. And Ken tells the tale with wit and insight, not to mention a couple of fart jokes."

A.J. Jacobs, author of It's All Relative

"Ken Jennings has achieved what physicists have always said was impossible: he's written a book that analyses the mechanics of humor while being very funny. To paraphrase E. B. White, if analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog, in this case the frog is shouting 'Ooh! That tickles! More! Do it again!' "

Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

"The insights are sharp, witty, and sometimes startling. . . . Like any honest book published in 2018, Planet Funny does ever so slightly make you want to jump off a bridge. The way only a good book can."