A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #417
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For October 29-November 4, 2025
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. We’ve been very energized by Tuesday’s elections. Most of all by the victory of our Mayor-elect Mamdani here in NYC, but we’re also heartened but the results in Virginia, California, and New Jersey. No bits today! It’s good to feel good!
What We Enjoyed This Week
I’m Your Uploaded Bloodwork Results, and No, I Will Not Explain Myself to You by Ria Sardana (McSweeney’s) We love the specificity of this piece. A satirical critique of our obtuse and disorienting healthcare system could easily get hazy by taking a 30,000 foot POV, but Ria zooms in on one small situation which makes the critique sharper, more evocative, and much funnier.
A Brief Questionnaire Before You Adopt This Rescue Cat
by Gracie Beaver-Kairis (McSweeney’s) This is impressive heightening! Gracie finds a lot of topics for this questionnaire, which adds a lot of variety, but never loses focus on heightening how unreasonable and overbearing the whole thing is.
Mobsters We Have Seen on High by Susan Mulcahy (The New Yorker) Periodically we like to highlight non-short-humor pieces that are not only interesting but are also, in their own way, funny. In this case, we were drawn to the amazing details. Sometimes, a story is so odd and fun that the job of the writer is just to get out of the way. Susan lays out this tale simply and elegantly, and lets the wild facts speak for themselves—including an amazing kicker.
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Django Gold (Colbert, the Onion) is bringing a BRAND-NEW hour (plus or minus five minutes) of stand-up comedy to the Gutter on Friday, November 7 as part of the New York Comedy Festival!
Come get silly, Django style - grab your tickets today!
Devised Comedy @ Adler from Matt Gehring
After fifteen years in comedy and five years shaping talent with Ars Nova CAMP, I’m launching the Devised Comedy Winter Immersion at Stella Adler Studio (open to all). The program takes comedy seriously, offering six original courses: Devised Comedy, Writing for Sketch, Acting for Sketch, Body & Comedy, Improvisation for Stage, and Improvisation for Film/TV/Audio—taught by DC Pierson, Chet Siegel, Moujan Zolfaghari, Mahayla Laurence, and me. It’s a chance for actors to sharpen their comedic craft or comedians to deepen their acting. The goal: treat comedy with the same artistic rigor as drama.
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An Old Favorite
Realistic Schedule for Election Day by Taylor Garron (McSweeney's) In zooming in on our local elections this week, we were reminded of this 2018 piece, in which Taylor does a great job succinctly capturing the keyed-up anxiety of election days. Her clipped, short sentences really bring to life that now familiar out-of-breath pace.
Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.
Updates From Your Editors and Friends of the Newsletter
James had a piece in Air Mail about the undecided voters in this week’s NYC elections: people stuck in their costumes, lighthouse keepers, the sixth borough, and more.
And a quick technical update, you can now manage your subscription to our Newsletter by logging into Buttondown. That’s right, dear readers, the power is in your hands! May you wield it wisely.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
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