For October 14-20, 2026

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. You probably didn’t even hear about it because of all the buzz around You Can See Everything, but we ALSO made a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes that came out last weekend. Now our movie may not have any “footage” of Holmes or “interviews” with her, and in fact, it may not really have any “information” about her at all, but it does have a lot of shots of us reading short humor pieces and also one scene with Nathan Fielder! He tells us to please go away and stop filming him in a way that really makes you think about the line between reality and fiction.

What We Enjoyed This Week

Your Football Team Needs More Comedy-Magic by Bizzy Coy (Points in Case) We just love all the reveals about the narrator that we get over the course of the piece: his teenage son, his debts, and his superbly-named rival, Bucky Huddle. There’s also a particularly great callback involving missing toilet paper.

I Am the World’s Most Annoying Website by Nick DiLallo (McSweeney’s) Nick packs a ton of annoying website specifics into this piece without the premise ever feeling overly broad or non-specific. A very funny take on the grim reality of what far too many websites are like in 2026.

The Best “I Voted Stickers” of 2026 by Don Moynihan (Can We Still Govern?) It’s nice to be reminded that there’s at least ONE thing about U.S. elections that you can enjoy in an unabashed, uncomplicated, anxiety-free way: I Voted Stickers. It’s tough to pick a favorite from this bunch. You gotta love the Louisiana sticker designed by William Joyce, but as Don says, “We are all the [‘I voted now let me sleep’] cat.”

-- AD --

Hosted by Lana Schwartz (The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney's) Letters & Sodas brings together standup comedy, humor pieces, fiction, and essay readings in a way they never have been before (or at least not in recent memory). The next show is Wednesday, October 28 at Greats of Craft in LIC at 7 p.m. and features:

Erin Harland (Your Best Actress)
Ilana Michelle Carmi (Reductress, MTV, Staged Haze)
Jay Martin (New York Magazine, The Village Voice, Esquire)
David Guzman (The Onion, New Yorker, author of Pole Antarctica: The Doomed Gabriel Expedition To The Bottom Of The World)
Ash Diggs (Means TV, host of Get Out The House! podcast)

Tickets available online and at the door.

(Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!)

An Old Favorite

Audio Tour by Patricia Marx (The New Yorker) Patricia really nails the tone and vocabulary of museum audio tours—it’s such a fun form for a humor piece. There are also tons of satisfying reveals about Todd Niesle and what he’s up to, but they’re never too plotty and never get in the way of the jokes.

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

Luke’s got just ONE spot left in his advanced short humor writing workshop on Wednesday nights in November and also just ONE spot left in his Thursday afternoon advanced short humor workshop in November! Grab a spot now if you don’t want to wait til 2027 to take a class!