This is a book (out May 1, 2024 with University of Chicago Press -- order here) in which I discuss the nature of the fascinating relationship between humor and morality in our everyday lives. The focus is not on canned jokes (which are told) but on wisecracks (which are made), the kind of improvised wit that occurs in interpersonal relationships: teasing, banter, mockery, leg-pulling, pranks, taking the piss, and more. Wisecracks raise moral concerns: sometimes they involve lying, sometimes they sting, and sometimes they play on racial or sexual stereotypes. I investigate these concerns and others in this book. One overarching thesis is that you can't have a good sense of humor without having a good sense of morality, and vice versa (which I discussed very briefly on NPR's Academic Minute). This is brought out by discussion of various psychological disorders and illnesses that predict flawed senses of humor. But it also comes from exploring how various moral (or immoral) properties in wisecracks (like meanness or deception) can make them funnier (or less funny), and how various funny (or unfunny) properties in morally-loaded activities can make them morally better (or worse). I conclude with recommendations for how to develop better senses of humor and morality, recommendations that depend on having a well-developed sense of empathy from which one can also occasionally detach in the face of life's absurdities.

Introduction

Chapter 1: "You had to be there!"  What Makes Things Funny and Why

Chapter 2: "That's just not funny!" How Morality Does (and Doesn't) Bear on Humor

Chapter 3: "Back when I was in 'Nam...." Deceptive Wisecracks

Chapter 4: "Lay off!" Mockery, Disability, Morality

Chapter 5: "Somebody ought to throw those boys a basketball!" Stereotyping Wisecracks 

Chapter 6: "I feel your hilarious pain." Flawed Senses of Humor, Flawed Senses of Morality

Chapter 7: "Always look on the bright side of death!" How and Why to Find the Funny in Wisecracks about Misery, Tragedy, and Death

Independent Entry: "Why I am Not a Humor Realist: A Response to the Defamation by Very Bad Wizards"

An interview with me about Wisecracks and Responsibility from the Margins, conducted by Sam Vucic (Cornell), October 2022.

Me on NPR's Academic Minute talking about why psychopaths have bad senses of humor, May 2023.

Why AI isn't Funny, op-ed in The Messenger, 9/23

Advance review of Wisecracks in Publisher's Weekly (1/24)