Comedy Central announced today that Baratunde will become the supervising producer for digital at The Daily Show. It’s news that Craig, Adam and I have been excited about since the moment Baratunde told us. Not excited like we wanted him gone, but excited like it’s an awesome opportunity and he’s …
Our Work
This week we flew up to Toronto to test out a new kind of Comedy Hack Day. CMDC had us build and demo two Comedy Hack Day-style projects at their conference. We brought six Comedy Hack Day all-stars (Zoe, Toby, Matt, Derek, Kim, and Aliya) and made two projects: Tab Champ and …
You know those startup videos? The ones that explain a product as you see people laughing in parks and b-roll of the Golden Gate Bridge? We made one for the most recent Comedy Hack Day winner–WellDeserved, the premier marketplace for unused privilege. We had a ton of fun creating this …
Miranda July has just released two things that are wonderful: Somebody, a messaging app that encourages strangers to deliver your texts to friends verbally, and a short film that imagines four increasingly awesome stories around the app. When Somebody hit the Burrito Den, our internal Slack channel for goofy stuff, …
In December 2006, virtual real-estate mogul and real-life millionaire Anshe Chung conducted an interview with CNET inside the virtual walls of a Second Life studio. But not long into the interview, something not-so surprising happened. The conversation was hijacked by a bombardment of flying penises. Pictures and video went viral …
We might be launching a series of good talks with good people, or we might not. For the purposes of this blog post, let’s say we are. To kick off Talks With Interesting People, I sat down with Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, April 24, 2014 in Chicago, Ill. …
While we love comedy and bake it into nearly every part of our day-to-day lives, it’s not the perfect tool for every job. As much as our brains may find humor in nearly everything, sometimes life calls for regular human behavior like showing sympathy, respect, or just ordering a sandwich …
Eli Horowitz might seem like an odd trailblazer for innovative digital books—he served for 10 years as editor and publisher of the very paper-centric indie publishing house McSweeney’s—but his most recent project, The Silent History, pulls off something many e-books struggle to do: it succeeds at both the “e” and the “book.” …
Cultivated Wit, that’s us, needs a San Francisco-based intern-in-chief. Furthermore, henceforth, and hereinafter, we need this young, eager individual to assist in community management and editorial operations for our esteemed outfit of borderline professional employees. What do we mean by “community management” and “editorial operations”? Why, that’s a great question …
So let’s see. There is Whiskey Friday. There is my panel (How Creative People Arrive At Good Ideas) featuring Scott Aukerman at 11:00 am Sunday. Then there is Baratunde’s panel (Communicating With Humor: Perils & Best Practices) featuring Baratunde at 12:30 pm Sunday. What are you doing with the rest …
We’ve always been a company of overlapping skills and interests. “And” was part of our founding. Comedy and technology. Agency and content and events and products. New York and San Francisco. Burritos and bicycles. Today we announce another affirmative and: the merger of Cultivated Wit and I Shot Him. See …
Here begins a new chapter in my life. And as new chapters go, this one is going to be an amazing, sexy, joke-filled jumble. Adam Peterson and I are merging our design studio, I Shot Him, with the fine gentlemen at Cultivated Wit. From the moment we met these comedy-spouting dweebs, …
Back in September 2012, I tweeted about Apple’s third-time rejection of Drones+, an iOS app that displayed reports of killings by U.S.-operated unmanned aerial vehicles. The app’s creator, Josh Begley, emailed to thank me for the tweet, and thus began an occasional electronic messaging relationship about data, hackathons, and robot …
Robert Mankoff, aside from being The New Yorker‘s cartoon editor, is a cool dude. We had the pleasure of meeting Bob for lunch last year, and barely a second passed in silence as we gushed excitedly about humor, comedy, and the most effective method of midtown jaywalking. Why do I …
It’s so much easier to obsess with the internet. If you like something a lot—a band, an athlete, a particular vegetable because you’re weird and play favorites with produce but it’s 2014, and there are communities for everything including parsnips, so shut up—there exists nearly endless amounts of content regarding …
We had the pleasure of virtually “sitting down with” 99% Invisible host Roman Mars only 24 hours into his latest Kickstarter campaign. The conversation streamed live, and really, you should’ve been there. But lucky for you, Youtube never forgets, so we’ve posted the full video right here. You’re welcome. As …
There’s a refrain we’ve been using with this Fuck You Congress campaign: This site shouldn’t exist. The number one reaction to the site has been shock, not out of disgust but out of surprise that this domain was even available as of last week. And it’s that particular variety of …
Although I’ve been visiting my sister in Lansing, Michigan for over seven years, I only got a good look at Detroit for the first time one year ago. I had been invited by MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito to be part of a four-day innovation hackathon involving the Lab, …
It only took three Comedy Hack Days to finally expose the truth. The MIT Media Lab played host to this weekend’s hackathon, which brought together 14 teams of comedians and developers in a contest to crown the most hilarious app, site, or musical toilet. The five-person team that called itself …
“I think this is the most dangerous thing I’ve done at the Lab.” “More dangerous than the lasers?” “Yeah.” These were not comforting words for the man seated closest to the confetti cannon. A minute later, an explosion of red, pink, and white tissue paper bits filled the conference room, …
We all know technology is changing nearly everything. It has affected food delivery, personal navigation, and the rhetoric of our mayoral candidates. I’ve been a tech junkie all my life, and a lot of that passion developed in the 12 years I lived in the Boston area (1995-2007). This is …
Comedy is important! Technology is important! Comedy and technology are important together! I recently sat down with Nathan Cykiert at The Verge. Mostly we just sat there, but after 53 minutes of silence and mindful eye contact, we talked about all sorts of fun things in this wide-ranging interview. Then …
Two down, eight to go. That’s our progress bar for shooting the web series we’re making with AOL about successfully crowdfunded businesses. A few weeks ago, we went up to East Harlem to visit Aurora Anaya-Cerda, owner of La Casa Azul Bookstore. It’s the only independent bookstore in East Harlem …
We’re doing a new thing, folks. And I have to say, of all the things we’ve ever done, this is definitely a new one. For those who don’t know, Baratunde writes the back page column for Fast Company. Starting with this most recent piece he wrote on young entrepreneurs, Baratunde …
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