10 Good Things: How Keith Richards is like a comedian, gatekeepers, 30 Rock, etc.

Also: The importance of podcasts, creativity, rules of engagement, and more.

⛑️ The Stones’ Keith Richards works on tracks the same way comics work on a bit:

This way of working – repeatedly jamming and honing a song as long as it takes – was driven by Keith [Richards]. “If you chase a song far enough, you’re gonna corner it,” he later said, “like a rat!”

⛑️

Cramer Comedy Newsletter

: Podcasts once again have taken on an outsized importance in the comedy scene.

Podcasts can solve a few problems growing comedians face. They are a safe place to test out or even conceive new material. If a bit goes over well with a co-host or guest, that's a nugget of an idea to expand upon onstage. Cynically speaking, podcasts are also just more #content. Scroll through LinkedIn, and you'll see plenty of hustle bros talking about the podcast content funnel, how one episode can be a full YouTube video, 5 instagram reels, two graphic quote cards, etc. It's exhausting, but it's true. When comedians are expected to put so much out online, a podcast can be a meaningful alternative to a full crowd-work pivot or giving away all your material in clips.

⛑️ Gene Roddenberry’s advice to fledgling “Star Trek” writers: “All production problems can and should be solved in the typewriter.”

⛑️ Three questions to help you to write more memorable jokes.

🔑 Can someone else say this joke and it be just as funny?

I always test my jokes with this question. The whole goal is to make your jokes un-stealable. If a stranger can say my joke and it be just as funny, I work to put my personal spin on it.

⛑️ John Hegarty on creativity:

"Creativity isn’t an occupation. It’s a preoccupation: Truly great creative people are constantly working...Everything they encounter is being absorbed, processed, and reformed, eventually to return in some new shape as an idea."