All right.
I'm going to come over here first.
I love your sense of humor.
Thank you.
That's very kind.
So actually, I want to focus on focusing on the punch line.
So which comedians kind of influenced you?
Oh my gosh!
That's such a great question.
Comedians!
I don't know.
You know, I went to see Paula Poundstone when
she was in Flagstaff.
And I really think she's super funny on--
what's the show that she's on?
Wait Wait-- Don't Tell Me!
Thank you.
And I think if she's not on it, I don't listen to it.
If she's on it, I do.
But then this is I've been thinking about humor so much.
And I think one thing I get away with that I'm probably not
that funny, but that people don't expect that I'm
going to be funny, right?
And so I feel like when your expectations are really low--
and this is true for everything.
Your expectations are really low.
Ooh, that's pretty funny!
So Paula Poundstone, when I go to see her in person,
I'm expecting super funny.
And she's like, eh, pretty funny.
But on Wait Wait--
Don't Tell Me when everybody around her
is not quite as funny as she is, she's incredibly funny.
And a lot of it comes from--
so the last reading I did was--
well, a couple of readings ago it
was in Salt Lake City, Utah at the University of Utah.
And Bhanu Kapil was there, the poet and nonfiction writer.
We get there to the reading.
She and I hang out in advance.
But she goes straight up to the organizer and says,
can I have a shovel?
Do you guys have a shovel here at the Poetry Center
if I had requested a shovel?
It's Utah, though.
So yeah, they have a shovel.
So they go out.
And she she's like, thank you.
And she digs up like a pile of dirt
and carries it in and drops in on the floor.
And she says, I just want us to feel grounded tonight.
And I mean-- so to me, the idea of humor
I think comes in those spontaneous moments
where they're not expected.
And so everybody I've ever loved in terms of humor
has been along those lines where I
don't think it's going to happen,
don't think it's going to happen, and then does.
And it's also, I think, rare for women
to have that opportunity to be funny,
to nod to Paula Poundstone and Jane Curtin,
and just this history of like Saturday Night Live type women
who live in my soul, like Jane Curtin.
Picture her with her blonde bob.
She doesn't look like she's going to be funny.
And then she is.
So that's, I think, the kind of people that I gravitate toward.
That's awesome.
Thank you.
So I don't know.
I have a little more insight into your life
than some other people in this room.
But do you feel better about buying the paper towels
when you drive the little Honda to Sam's
Club versus the giant four-wheel drive Toyota truck.
All right, all right, Jesse Sensibar.
Or does it not matter?
So some people have been planted in the audience
to bring up the hard questions.
Look.
Erik bought that fricking truck after I wrote the book.
And I'm like, you can't buy a truck.
I just wrote a book about sustainability.
I was like-- it was impossible.
He's like, oh my god, I only drive four miles a day,
which is true.
He does not drive very far in the truck of doom.
But it's a huge thing.
And he's like, look, I can fit it in the garage.
And four hours later, he's like-- er er--
and he has to pull up and put one of the tires
alongside the stair, and then you can fit.
If you notice from the essay about paper towels,
I don't have a lot of control over that man.
But he promises he doesn't drive it much.
And he has some other sustainable--
oh!
But I have been thinking about this.
This is a system I'm trying to spread around the universe.
It's called the personal cap and trade program.
And so Erik Sather, who does drive this gigantic Toyota
Tundra that gets maybe 12 miles a gallon.
Again, he only drives four miles a day.
But he uses that much carbon in his life.
But he doesn't travel very much.
He never flies.
He hardly ever goes crazy places.
He rides his bicycle.
He is a great gardener and planter of trees.
I'm thinking that maybe we can all
invest in that sort of cap and trade program.
So everybody has their peccadilloes, right?
Like, I really love steak, or I really love--
I really, really, really, really love
to just sit in the backyard and burn a lot of carbon.
I love coal.
Coal is my favorite.
But then I'm like, but then, look.
I've got a solar panel on my phone charger.
No.
OK, I'm being sarcastic.
But that sense of there's only so much individuals can do.
And I think one of the most ridiculous things that's
been happening with any attempt to get people to change,
to make climate change stop, is full
of guilt, full of this idea of saying, no, you can't do this.
Don't do this.
Which as I said, humans are really
bad at saying no and stopping doing what they want to do.
So there's got to be a way then that you say, OK, I
can stop certain things.
There are parts of me that--
I could never use plastic again.
Plastic does not seem that necessary.
It's made of petroleum.
Let's give that up.
I don't need to fly to Bangkok three times a year.
I can go once a year.
These little things.
I don't know if that's going to make the difference.
But I think it's that kind of conscientiousness
that will make the difference, that kind of attention
to the little things that you can
do that say, I'm not going to--
it's not all or nothing.
Either I'm going to be sustainable or I'm not.
I feel like you can be sustainable in this department
and not in this other department.
It's a good question.
Erik loves that this book is written about him, by the way.
He's like, thank you very much for that.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
And I'm supposed to be repeating the questions.
OK.
I'll repeat them now.
The previous question is, where does humor come from?
No.
The first question.
The previous question was about the Toyota Tundra.
Now, this question from Haley is:
I've known you to write a lot about animals.
And it seems to hold true for you for this book as well.
So I'm just curious if you started
reflecting on the lives of the animals due to climate change
first, or if you considered your own life,
and then how your life impacts the animals.
That's really smart.
So Haley is asking about, do animals come first
or do humans come first?
Or in my writing, who do I consider first?
And I mean, again, this book is also--
the darker parts of this book are about suicide.
And they're about what kind of suicide
are we making happen as we sort of run roughshod
over the planet and how that's connected to, I think,
some of the ways we think about suicide.
They say that suicide happens actually
in more developed countries, more industrialized countries,
because--
well, this is one theory about it.
When you live in a world where almost everything is
made available to you, when you could be succeeding
if you would just get it together,
that that sort of guilt and that self-blame that happens
from not being able to get it together is one of the things
that causes people to kill themselves.
And in countries where it's obvious
that it's the system that is not working for them,
they're less likely to commit suicide.
So this is a long way around to that question, which is humans,
they seemed like a good idea for a while.
And it's not that I think animals are better, or purer,
or more interesting, or anything like that.
But I feel like animals really don't
get in the way of themselves in the same way
that humans sometimes do, and the way that--
I was talking to somebody the other day,
and the way humans sometimes underthink things and overthink
things.
But the middle ground is very rare.
The right amount of thinking about things
does not ever-- it does not normally seem to happen.
Whereas animals just do what they do.
So the next book I'm working on is
about how animals might have better communication skills
than humans in a lot of ways.
And so there's these prairie dogs that live in Flagstaff.
And they can tell the difference between somebody
wearing a red shirt, like their buddy who brings them snacks.
Ooh, red shirt guy is coming.
[CLICKING] And they'll send these little prairie dog
sounds.
And they'll say, ooh, red shirt guy.
And they'll all pop up, and they'll wait for red shirt guy.
But if yellow shirt guy is coming, nuh-uh.
They're like, ooh, yucky yellow shirt guy.
He doesn't bring us any snacks.
Always throwing stones at us.
We hate yellow shirt guy.
And they'll communicate yellow shirt guy is coming.
But to me, the idea that they are collectively
trying to make an argument about red shirt
guy versus yellow shirt guy in pursuit
of some sort of survival to me is interesting compared to I
think along those lines of the way
that humans sort of overdo it sometimes.
So I would say always think of animals first,
and then I try to give humans a break, like,
OK, I guess humans probably have some skills like the animals
occasionally.
Is that it?
OK.
Well, thank you very much.
You guys are awesome.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Patri.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Thank you [INAUDIBLE].
[APPLAUSE]