Talking Comedy And Tragedy with Ferne Pearlstein & Bob Edwards

I thought about doing this episode very soon after starting this podcast. Ferne Pearlstein and Bob Edwards made a documentary more than a decade ago called “The Last Laugh” which talked about how comedy can tackle a tragedy as immense as the Holocaust and what lessons that might suggest for effectively communicating about crime. They interviewed basically every comedy legend you could think of and it’s an incredible film that will make you laugh and cry. 

Talking to them and trying to tease out what lessons it might have for understanding and communicating about crime was a conversation that I really wanted to have and one that I really enjoyed. I think you will too. 

Ferne Pearlstein is an award-winning producer, director, cinematographer, and editor, based in New York. She is a winner of the Sundance Cinematography Prize, and a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. In addition to her features SUMO EAST AND WEST and THE LAST LAUGH, which she produced, directed, shot, and edited, and both of which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and aired nationally on PBS”s Independent Lens series, she is currently producing JACK WHITTEN: A COSMIC SOUL, directed by Yoruba Richen.

Robert Edwards is writer, filmmaker, and the author of Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm, published by OR Books, about how to resist right wing authoritarianism in the US. He wrote and directed the feature films LAND OF THE BLIND, starring Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland, and WHEN I LIVE MY LIFE OVER AGAIN, (aka ONE MORE TIME) starring Christopher Walken and Amber Heard. Most recently he co-produced and co-directed the feature documentary DEATH & TAXES with Justin Schein, and writes The King’s Necktie, a weekly blog on politics.

ASK E. JEAN, director Ivy Meeropol’s feature documentary about E. Jean Carroll, which premiered at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival, and on which Ferne a writer, editor, and supervising producer, will be in theaters this spring.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I'm Jeff Asher and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast. This episode is one that I really wanted to do from the moment I launched a podcast. Crime data rarely tells us how people process what happened. And when communities experience violence, tragedy, or collective trauma, the public response isn't shaped by statistics alone. It's shaped by narrative, memory, and sometimes even humor. In this episode, I'm joined by filmmakers Fern Perlstein and Bob Edwards, the directors of The Last Laugh, a documentary that explores the role of comedy in confronting the Holocaust. Through conversations with comedy legends and survivors, the film asks, what's off limits? Who gets to joke about what, and whether human can serve a constructive purpose in the aftermath of unimaginable tragedy. We talk about how humor can function as a coping mechanism, where the line sits between punching up and punching down, and even what comedy legends can teach us to better understand crime. This episode steps back from charts and trend lines to examine how societies process trauma and what role storytelling and humor plays in shaping how we remember, respond, and move forward. Thank you both for joining the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you. So for this episode, I really wanted to talk about how comedy can be a critical component of sort of healing from tragedy. And I thought your documentary, The Last Laugh, was just such an incredible display of this. And I don't think I told you guys this, but I have triplets. Actually, they turn eight tomorrow. And when they were really little, we do these midnight feeds, and you know, you get them up and they're still sleeping and you put them on these cushions. And I would sit there for like 40 minutes with a bottle and feed them in the middle of the night so that they would sleep longer. And I would just, I'd have my headphones on and I'd watch my iPad. And I had like, you know, Band of Brothers, war movies. The Pelicans were playing the Trailblazers in this late night series. So I was watching NBA basketball. And your documentary, The Last Laugh, was one of the things that I watched. And so I have this endearing memory of watching this terribly sad and funny and just altogether great documentary. So I'm very excited to talk to you both about the documentary and sort of this intersection of comedy and tragedy and what you learned of it. So start off, what is your background? What sort of brought you to the world of film?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Well, you know, I started as a documentary photographer. So it was kind of uh an easy switchover because it gave me more opportunities and more ways to tell stories. So mine is more straightforward than yours.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Well, Fern is selling herself short because she had this long career as a documentary photographer and had worked for Japanese newspapers and traveled and so forth, and then went to the documentary film program at Stanford, which I also went to, but uh at a different time. I'd come out of a military background and but always wanted to be in film and landed in that program. And that's how we ended up meeting and and working together and then getting married.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Well, so I was making a film. I had finished the program before him a few years, and I was working as a cinematographer for many years, and he hired me to shoot his film, and that's how we essentially met.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

So why choose documentaries first off as sort of your medium? And more importantly, why make a film documentary about the Holocaust and this angle of the Holocaust?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

It was actually gifted to me.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Fern had a friend who was getting his PhD in Oregon, and Fern was working for this Japanese newspaper, the New York City Bureau, and they sent her down to Miami to do a story, and while we're there, that's not true? It's not true. No. I guess it's the truth is lost in the mystery.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Well, okay, okay. I yes, you're combining two of the early stories. So, so this friend of mine who had done this sort of dissertation on humor in the camps, it was sort of like, we're, you know. Oh, I see. You're saying it because we met okay. So when I so when I was working as a documentary photographer, a friend of mine and I were in Miami. I was on assignment and we met this survivor, and we were talking to her because Mouse had just come out, Art Spiegelman's mouse. And we were asking her about it. We were like, what do you think? And she said, Well, you know, you can't her only reference because it was the first graphic novel, her only reference to comic strips were the Sunday papers. So she's like, You can't make, you know, you can't turn the Holocaust into comedy. You can't do it. And then we had this whole interesting conversation with her, and then he asked her, had she read it, and she said no. So he went with this information and wrote a paper for a class he was taking, and it was researching all this humor that was in the camps. It was like in the concentration camps, the displaced persons camps, the transit camps. And he he did this paper, handed it to me, and said, make this into a movie. So that's how the process went. I mean, so when he gave it to me and it was just all humor during World War II, I knew that I was gonna have to open it up to post-war humor. And he and I shared that sensibility. So he knew I was the right person to do it.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Did you sort of know what the story was other than sort of the outline before you were making it, or did all of these interviews point you?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Absolutely. No, no, no, no, no. We had Bob and I had mapped it out completely. You know, if you read, if you read early proposals that we wrote, you would see the same film. But we knew, I mean, the one struggle was I knew I was gonna interview all these comedians. I already knew a lot of the archival clips we wanted to use, but I was I was desperately looking for something that was gonna elevate it from just a talking heads film. So that story, I knew there would be that story. I didn't know until I found Renee that she would be the heart and soul of the film. But I knew I needed to make it less sort of like this very, you know, interview-heavy film.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Can can you just talk me through sort of the synopsis of the film for for listeners that haven't seen it?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I'm gonna have you do that because you're faster.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Well, let's film about what is taboo for humor proceeding from the premise that the Holocaust would seem to be the most off-limits topic or one of the most for humor. Um, but clearly it's not because there's been a lot of humor around it, right? You can go back to Mel Brooks and the producers. There's a lot of humor attacking the Nazis during the war and since it's still around. But there's a big difference between humor that's about the perpetrators and humor that touches on the victims, even if it's not at the expense of the victims. But just invoking the images of the camps and so forth is a third rail for many people. So with the film, we wanted to explore whether there was a role for humor, a constructive role, a productive role, rather than one that's just cheap or punching down, as we say, at the expense of the victims. And once we start exploring that, you know, this entire world of humor and psychology and history opened up to us.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

What lessons do you guys sort of take from having done all of this research and then having interviewed all of these incredible people with uh, you know, I'm I'm just amazed at the the number of people that have lived such a such rich, incredible lives that you guys were able to talk to. What have you learned from all these conversations?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Well, I'm gonna start that with a quote from Rob Reiner, who it is just breaks my heart that he's not here right now. He was the first person to agree to be in the film, and he opened the doors to every other person that's in the film. But he has this line about, you know, there's nothing funny about the Holocaust. There's nothing at all humor about it, but humor and what it takes to survive. There can be humor in that. And I think that the lessons that are very crystal clear for me is, you know, a lot of people need that humor to get through difficult moments, to let off steam as a release valve. It's not for everybody. Not everybody, you know, uses that. But the huge distinction is where humor is productive and where it's not, like where it can, like like Bob said, punching up versus punching down, where it's used to, you know, help me with this, like make, you know, like helps draw call attention to the ills in the world rather than making fun of the victim.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Yeah, and Rob Reiner, not only was he pivotal in the film just because he was so beloved and so at the center of American comedy in so many ways. And once he was on board, other people said, Oh, you're legitimate. But we talked to him about All in the Family, which is a good example of a very provocative piece of art that's taken differently by different people, you know. Many people loved it, of course, and thought it was fantastic social commentary and criticism. But there were people who said half your audience agrees with Archie, and they're not laughing at him, they're laughing with him. So this is one of the big issues that their film tackles.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Did you learn anything about sort of the role of comedy in a larger scale rather than at the sort of the victim level, but as how we as a society engage with tragedy?

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Well, as Fern was saying, the the film opened up to a lot of other things, way beyond the Holocaust. It came out just a couple years before COVID. And so the Me Too movement, the lockdown, and in fact, every sort of serious, dramatic, tragic thing that's happened since then, we now kind of see through a different lens because of our experiences making the film. And and in each of those cases, people look to humor as a way to to cope and deal with it, but it's always fraught because those are serious topics. And and you you never want to be, unless you're have bad faith in the first place, you never want to be in a position of engaging humor that's destructive or damaging.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

And and humor, it's been like a the use of comedy, I should say, has been a moving target since we made this film. I made a film after that for Trevor Noah about cancel culture, and that's a moving target. So how you know comedy is used, like for a while it felt like late-night comedy shows were being more direct news coverage than the news was in some cases. So it and and now it's changed again. And then there, you know, there's how would you describe that?

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Well, we always say it's moving in two at least two directions at once. So there are things that used to be off-limits for comedy in a more prudish era, let's say, that are now routine. You you hear comedians talk about all kinds of subjects that used to be taboo. But there are also things that you used to be able to talk about or joke that are now off limits and and a third rail. And it's not permanent, like those things are shifting and going back and forth all the time.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

But just as politics are divided right now, so so is what's not okay. You know, like what's not okay for you is different for than what's not okay for somebody else, and and vice versa. And that is adding to this this sort of culture clash we're living through.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

I guess there's certainly no correct answer to this, but sort of combining those two, the idea of this cancel culture and the comedy of things like the producers, is that something that you think could get made today if we were 20, 25 years after such a horrific tragedy, or is has society changed too much?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

I think that it would be hard to make it right now, might be different in five, 10 years. But in this exact moment, I do think it might be hard. I think it would have been hard to make the last laugh right now.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

I mean, not only would it be hard to make the producers, the original Mel Brooks film from 67, it would be hard to do the Broadway musical even, which is now 20, 25 years ago that it premiered. The great irony there is the movie is the most, you know, despicable topic you can imagine for a lighthearted musical, becomes a Broadway hit. And then it really did become a Broadway hit 25 years later, right? Harry Shearer talks about that in our film. But now I I don't think you could get away with it. I think people would be, you know, rightly concerned about what your motives were, and especially if you didn't have the goodwill of being Mel Brooks.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Right. But I I'm gonna add, you know, it wasn't easy for Mel Brooks to make it when he made it, and it wasn't easy for us to make the last laugh. We we were trying since 1993. So I got my first interview with Rob Reiner in 2011. So it's it's always hard. These topics are never easy, but I just think with with everything going on right now, I think right now, this moment, very difficult.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Yeah, and I I was very much struck by how you literally could not make the same movie now. Obviously, you know, Rob Reiner's project passing and a lot of the survivors having having passed in the last decade, it was it's sort fortuitous that it was made when it was made. Do you think, and this is going in a totally different direction, but do you think there's sort of a unique pressure on our generation, largely as sort of the last generation that have direct memories of those survivors and to have dealt with them to tell these stories? How how do you sort of take that pressure?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

People underestimate the children and the grandchildren of survivors. You know, they are gatekeepers of some of these stories. So it is true that we're losing most of the survivors, but the stories are being passed out now. Are people willing to hear their stories right now? That is the question.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

I mean, that we're living the age of disinformation, right? More so than maybe at any time in human history. But as early as 1945, the spring of 45, when the first camps were liberated, Eisenhower understood that people were going to deny that it happened. That's why he had German citizens marched out to see with their own eyes the camps and to photograph the camps and that. But when the last generation of first person people with first-person experience of the Holocaust is gone, it'll be entirely on the two Gs as they're known, the three Gs and other folks to carry that on. And yeah, I am concerned that people will will that that impulse that has been there since the spring of 45 to say it never happened, it was a lie, it was a hoax. I'm concerned that it will rise.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

And how does sort of getting back to the comedy, how does that change as you get from sort of that first generation? Because you I think incredibly impressively talk about the sort of the the first generation, the survivors approach to comedy, as you get towards that second and third generation, is does it how does it change? How did you what did you take away from how the differences and how they those different generations approach things?

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Well, I I want to step back to something else you just said. How do we keep the memory alive? I believe personally that we we keep it alive by remembering other people's tragedies and other genocides as well. Right? There is nobody is, you know, if we don't if we only go and think, oh, you know, the Holocaust is the worst thing that ever happened, we are siloing ourselves and our memories. And I strongly, strongly feel that this is a matter of, you know, seeing all these different genocides, all these different tragic, you know, situations and seeing them clearly and you know having empathy for others. And that's how others will remember the Holocaust, right? Because Jewish people are gonna remember it. We learn about it through our own families. The question is, are other people gonna remember it? Are we gonna remember what happened to them and their families and their ancestors? That's the big to me, that's the that is the way.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, and there's no nobody's a bigger advocate of that point of view than Renee Firestone, main character in the film, who's a hundred now? Is she over a hundred? She's a hundred and one. She was 88 when we filmed her, and she says it clearly in the film. You know, she's a huge been to Rwanda many times, huge advocate for calling attention to genocides beyond the Holocaust, and not, as Fern says, siloing it as this unique event in human history, but keeping everybody's awareness of ongoing atrocities all over the world.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

And is there a role for sort of the entertainer of today to make that more real? I mean, it's it's much easier to laugh at something, to learn something while you're laughing, learn something while you're entertained and enjoying it, than to, you know, to go to the Holocaust Museum and it it's just like information and just like so devastatingly. What is the role of the entertainer in all of this in making sure that all of the the darkness and the the tragedy of today is something that we learn about? And especially as you said, in such an environment where there's so much misinformation and disinformation out there.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Well, I'm gonna answer that by saying that Bob and I share a mentor that named Bill Jersey, who when he was at one of our earliest, earliest screenings, he stood up and he said, you know, and he's he's also a hundred or not late nineties. And he said, you know, I have watched endless numbers of Holocaust films, but this is the first one that I let in because of the humor. Because he he, you know, you go into these films and you see horrors and you shut down. But he was saying that the humor opened him up, you know, he let his guard down, and then there would be a serious moment where you would see it, and he was sort of forced to take it in. So that always really touched me that he saw it that way. So I I agree with you that humor is a good way. It's like a common language we have.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, to your earlier point, how do we maintain the memory of it when it's just the ground has been trodden so heavily and everybody has seen the same sort of black and white footage and sad cello music? It ceases to have any power. So it's humor a way, a new way, a fresh way, an accessible way for people to approach this tragedy.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

And what has been the overall reception to your film?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

It's been very good. You know, I mean, honestly, it it premiered, it'll be 10 years in April at the Tribeca Film Festival, and then it went on to over a hundred film festivals, and it continued pretty extensively showing all over the world for many years, including Germany. It played multiple times in Germany. It plays differently now. It plays differently at every new political event. You know what I mean? Every new little pol mini political era, it it changes.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

I'm curious, how did it play in Germany?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

It it plays really well, but you know, you know, in it's very interesting. I we were lucky that we knew this going in, but you know, they're brought look, I don't know what's happening now, but they were the ten years ago, the audiences had been brought up to not laugh at Holocaust jokes, right? Not laugh at this situation.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

That's probably a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Well, well, it's interesting there are jokes in the film that are just sort of making fun or poking fun at, you know, sort of anti-Semitic jokes or whatever. That nobody said you can't laugh at that. So to me, that was very revealing. Like, well, it it's okay to laugh at at Jack Benny, you know, you know, making fun of himself in this Jewish stereotype, but it's not okay to laugh at that. And that felt almost worse because the film is giving you permission to laugh at these jokes. But it was, it just felt very revealing to me.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, it was tricky because you know they say Germany is the only country that ever learned anything, right? They they reckoned with their history in ways that many other countries, including the United States, have not done. But as a generalization, of course, you've got the AFD now, you've got a rising right-wing movement in Germany. We showed it there on the festival circuit when it came out, and a couple of times since then. I don't know how it would play there now. Might be different, might be worrying. So that's what, like Fern says, it changes all the time with the politics. Different parts of the film resonate differently and jump out that didn't jump out before.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

There was one city city in Germany that has a a cinematech, and they they invited me a number of times. And after the Me Too movement, they were like, Can you take out certain people?

SPEAKER_03 21:35

Yeah, they wanted, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

But it was, I was like, I can't, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

And they still showed it, but so then then you made a documentary about cancel culture just to exactly, exactly. Do you think are there lessons from your film, which was obviously made a decade ago, that pertain to our current moment? About like is there what is funny about our current political moment that we can laugh at?

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Well, I mean, one of the things that's in the last laugh that continues to be evergreen is the question of the power of power or weakness of humor and satire as a political force. We get into a little bit in the film because we want to believe that comedians can really have a political impact and, you know, be court jesters who bring the mighty down. And to some extent that's true. But as a couple of the people in the film talk about, satire can also be counterproductive, right? It can be a way for people who are suffering from political repression to let off steam that might otherwise be channeled into like getting out into the streets. And even the Nazis understood that. And especially in the beginning, they allowed a certain amount of humor, more than you would think. But the historical record shows that they understood that letting people make some jokes kept them from mobilizing and organizing against the regime. Now that changed as the war went on. But in the beginning, they were surprisingly tolerant. And I think we see it now, right? You do see comedians, I don't even need to mention any names. We all know who they are, who have gotten under the skin of various leaders. But ultimately, how much impact do they have? That is a question that is beyond me.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

And most of my audience, I think, I think, tends to be sort of working in that data and policy and research element frequently around, but certainly not exclusively to the criminal justice sphere. Do you have any thoughts on what you would want somebody working in that area to sort of take away from a film like this? That is a tough one. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Well, I think this is your business, your milieu.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Well, in my my pretty firm Pearl Stein documentary career, I had done some work on the criminal justice world with um Roger Grafe, who's a British criminologist, not with us any any longer. I don't know. I mean, I'd love to see some data on the impact of comedy and humor. I don't even know how you would quantify that or what the metrics would be, but I'd be very interested to see what could be gleaned from that and what the impact is on crime, crime statistics, and policing and those sorts of things. The general lessons of the film, I think, apply across the board and in all areas, economics, public affairs, health, whatever. We do believe that humor has a place. We think it can be constructive in the right hands when when wielded in good faith, but by the same token, it can also be weaponized for some some really horrible and nasty ends.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

I mean, like historically, the political cartoon is an attack on it's the ultimate punching up. So I b I think, you know, with issues of policing, there's, you know, are the memes going around, political cartoons that point to, you know, the misuse of power and stuff can be very, very effective. Almost especially because they go viral and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah, almost more effective than say stand-up or or sketch comedy or anything like that. I mean, we we can all think of cases of political cartoons that so shook the power structure that people rioted, people got arrested, people got attacked. That's a fraught job being a political.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I mean, speaking of Art Spiegelman, I mean, this is a little bit different, but that the the Crown Heights issue when they when he when he did the cover of The New Yorker, you know, like that was so stark, you remember?

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Yeah. Art spe it all comes back to Art Spiegelman, right? Mouse was the original of this film. You know, he's done work on 9-11 uh in the shout of No Towers, this book. Nobody tackles darker subjects than art. And didn't Mouse get banned somewhere recently? Newly banned, yeah. It's one of the most banned books in this latest book burning, you know, era that we're in. In fact, the there's a documentary film about art that came out, what, like last year? Yeah. It's a film about censorship, and it was itself censored.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Don't lack a sense of irony, at least.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

No, irony is neck deep.

SPEAKER_03 26:03

So I have to ask, I knew I was talking to you guys. I the first question that I wrote down will be uh towards the end of the ones that I ask you, but just what is it like talking to so many legends? Like this is as close as I'll get to talking to all of these comedy legends that I admire. So I have to ask you all, what what is that like?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Well, I will tell you that after I interviewed Mel Brooks, which was, you know, as you can imagine, not an easy interview to get, he put his hands on my face and he was like, Good job, Pearl Steam. And I was like, I think fire today.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Yeah, that was to to be in the presence of Mel Brooks and and some of these other people who are such icons. We're pretty starstruck.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Carl Reiner invited us into his house to do the interview and he came down the stairs and I I started to cry. I mean, it's it's pretty, it's it's it's it's heavy, you know, it's really incredible. And and like I said, Rob Reiner was just the mensch of all mensches, you know, like he was just the kindest and most generous person.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Did you laugh more than you expected while making a Holocaust documentary?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Well, I expected to laugh, but I also knew what there would be serious moments. See, people, you know, hear, oh, what's your film about Holocaust humor? They blanch. But I knew that there would be, you know, not just humor. It wasn't, you know, people just automatically assume that means we're making fun of the Holocaust, which is so interesting because that's exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Well, Fern's opening, sorry, her opening question to everybody was do you have a Holocaust joke? And usually they would say, No, but I have a Nazi joke, and then they tell us a joke about the Nazi.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

And I did that on purpose because I was it's such a serious subject that even though I'm interviewing comedians, I didn't, I wanted to give them permission to just like okay, set the tone.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Yeah. The only the only and I can't remember if this is in the film, but you asked that of Gilbert Gottfried. That was the first question. Do you have a Holocaust joke? And what did he say?

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Do I have a Holocaust joke? No, no, no. No, he said he said, There was a Holocaust? Nobody told me. But then he's not, I'm not telling his jokes. Sorry. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

He he is the guy with the sky his soul, the fewest lines, if any. No lines.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

No, no, no lines that he wouldn't cross.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Right. Sure. Sure. It I I was extremely struck by that. That the difference between the the Holocaust is not funny. There's no jokes in there. The Nazis, let's make fun of them. They are funny. Let's and to your point, let's punch punch up at them because they are worth mocking. So I I very much appreciate that. For sure. So what what's next for you guys? Any any projects in the works?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yes, but I'm keeping them under wraps.

SPEAKER_03 28:52

All right.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Something along these lines. Something along these lines of comedy. And I don't want to give it around.

SPEAKER_03 29:00

Very mysterious. I'll have to have you back on then in a few years if it comes out.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

I think we should do a thing about the analytics of uh if comedy helps.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Absolutely. And I'll give you my screenplay about the crime analyst that solves crime with Excel. It's uh Oh, that's a great idea. It's coming coming along. Look, can I steal it? Oh no. Oh no. Copyrighted. Fern and Bob, this has been wonderful. I really appreciate you both coming on. I I know that this is sort of uh a little bit out of left field, but this is a a conversation that I really, really wanted to have, and I really appreciate it. So thank you both.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

We appreciate it too. It was great talking to you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

It was a great, great fun to speak with you about it. Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and to learn more, head on over to ahdatalytics.com for more information and previous episodes. If you like what you heard, please leave a glowing review, which will help others to discover the show. Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.