__
COVER: How The Internet Saved Comedy ____pg.138 __includes:
__Pillow Talk With Andy Samberg ____by Chris Hardwick __pg.146
With more than 440 million views on YouTube, Andy Samberg has become the comedy king of viral videos. Chris Hardwick talks to the funnyman about Saturday Night Live and how the Internet is changing the world of comedy. Plus: a step-by-step guide to making the next “Dick in a Box.”
__The Humor Code ____by Joel Warner __pg.140
University of Colorado Boulder professor Peter McGraw’s research is dedicated to answering one question: What, exactly, makes things funny? At the university’s Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL) his team tests what they call the Theory of Benign Violation – a model McGraw claims can explain every imaginable type of humor.
__Painfully Funny ____by Brian Raftery __pg.154
For years, America’s Funniest Home Videos has made audiences laugh (and cringe) with its reels of groin shots and face plants. After 21 seasons the show still gets more than 7 million viewers a week. Brian Raftery explains why AFV just won’t die.
__Plus: __Infographics by Demetri Martin; Funny tweets from funny peeps (pg. 152)
__The Android Explosion ____by Fred Vogelstein __pg.118
In 2010, Android smartphones outsold the iPhone for the first time. Fred Vogelstein looks at the divergent strategies of Google and Apple, and how Android’s freewheeling ecosystem could threaten the iPhone.
__Murder By Numbers ____by Brian Raftery __pg. 128
Bill James is the senior adviser of baseball operations for the Boston Red Sox, using his deep statistical knowledge of the sport to help the team decide whom to sign. But his latest compendium of knowledge - the 685-page *Popular Crime - *is an anthology of murder, kidnapping, and assassination. Can it transform the way we think about crime?
__Half-Life ____by Adam Higginbotham __pg.158
Fifteen years after the Chernobyl meltdown, bears, wolves, and eagles have appeared again in the shadow of the crippled Soviet-era reactor. For a while it looked like the disaster site had created a sprawling wildlife park - but now scientists say something much more ominous may be going on.
__Plus __Japan’s history of earthquakes (pg.44); the science behind the fizz in soda (pg.54); the six Facebook types you should unfriend (pg. 66).
__Media Contact: __Rachel Millner, Rachel_Millner@condenast.com, 212-286-4673
