733 - Learning Comedy

About this episode

John discusses the learnability of comedy with guest Ali Barthwell, exploring insights from her teaching experience and the writing industry.

John welcomes five-time Emmy-winning writer Ali Barthwell (Last Week Tonight) to ask, can writers learn to be funny? Drawing from her time as a teacher at The Second City, they look at what writers can learn from sketch and improv, and how to reliably find ways to make an audience laugh. We also celebrate the WGA membership's ratification of the 2026 MBA, the educational future of the Scriptnotes book, and answer listener questions on the first scene of a comedy and when to stop taking assistant gigs and bet on yourself. In our bonus segment for premium members, Ali shares how she built a thriving writing career without ever having to live in New York or LA. Links: Ali Barthwell Preorder Ali's new book, Reality TV for Snobs The Second City Pre-inked star stamps The Padilla Pause: How the Breakout Star of SNL Nails Comic Timing by Jason Zinoman for NYTimes Funnier by Anne Libera Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book! Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Become a Scriptnotes Premium member , or gift a subscription Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube Follow Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok John August on Bluesky and Instagram Outro by Matt Gillespie (…

People in this episode

Host: John August

Guest: Ali Barthwell

Topics covered

• comedy writing
• improv
• sketch
• audience engagement
• WGA
• writing career

Keywords

• comedy
• writing
• improv
• sketch
• WGA
• audience laughter
• career advice

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Last Week Tonight, The Second City, Scriptnotes

Books & works: Reality TV for Snobs, The Padilla Pause: How the Breakout Star of SNL Nails Comic Timing, Funnier

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