Laughter Therapy CD sets from NPR

Laughter Therapy: Funny for a Living and Laughter Therapy: A Comedy Collection for the Chronically Serious
released by National Public Radio [Compact Disc 817 Nat]

Laughter Therapy is two sets of audio recordings from National Public Radio, featuring interview clips with comedians covering decades of NPR broadcasts. One 3-disc set — Laughter Therapy: Funny for a Living — is hosted by Ophira Eisenberg of NPR’s Ask Me Another, and the other is a 2-disc set — Laughter Therapy: A Comedy Collection for the Chronically Serious — hosted by Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me‘s Peter Sagal. Both sets follow the same formula — interview clips, interspersed with performance snippets from many of today’s and yesterday’s most noteworthy comics. Often, the comic was on tour to promote a “new” (at the time) book or DVD release, so some of many of the interviews cover the content of those books. But, often, the comics and interviewers are just riffing on the life of the comic. Entertainers including in “Funny for a Living” include Lucille Ball, Louis C.K., Sid Caesar, Charlie Chaplin, Billy Crystal, Dick Van Dyke, Jim Gaffigan, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx, Bob Newhart, Carl Reiner, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Wiig, Jonathan Winters and more. I really appreciated hearing the voices of both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in their segments! The “…Chronically Serious” volume features Mel Brooks, Drew Carey, Stephen Colbert, Eugene Levy, Martin Mull and Fred Willard, Paula Poundstone, Mo Rocca, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers and more.

Both sets are highly entertaining — my only complaint is that the snippets for each artist are so short that you’re left wanting more. Fortunately, in the case of many of these comedians, the libraries own their comedy routines on CD, or you can find their bits on YouTube as well!

[If you like this item, you might like these too – See each of the related artists in our catalog — we are likely to have some of their comedy albums available on CD, or through our Hoopla downloadable/streaming service!]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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