What’s So Funny About Interviews?

Using audio examples from a range of radio and oral history projects, we’ll explore 9 varieties of humour that could be cultivated in interview situations, from awkward pauses to word duels to happy accidents or chanting the ridiculous. This talk will draw on ideas and examples by people such as: Soren Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Henri Bergson, Italo Calvino, Marguerite Duras, Laura Jackson Riding, Samuel Beckett, Studs Terkel, as well as recent oral history and radio interviews with teenagers, asylum seekers, artists, and street-corner philosophers recorded in Leeds.