'Joker' Asks: Have You Heard The One About The Joke-Telling Poet?
"One of the things I talk about in the book is what I learned from the taboo subjects my parents never told me about: sex. So I learned about it from jokes and had to figure it out backwards. ... It's very much a hazard. And because you get a ton of misinformation, you get a ton of misogyny built into your brain at a very early age when your brain is still forming and it can cause long-term complications."
On whether he's heard any good jokes lately
"Many, but the one I've been thinking about is the one about the preacher who is late for the funeral out in the country. He knows it's a poor man and he wants to really do the job right, and so he's driving down the dirt road looking frantically for the cemetery [and] sees these two diggers out around a hole. He rushes up, he stands over the hole, he starts just preaching up a storm, determined to give this poor man as good a funeral as any rich man in the world. He delivers this impassioned speech, runs back to his car, and one of the diggers says 'That is the nicest thing I have ever seen, and I have been digging septic systems for 30 years.' "