In this episode, of the "What's So Funny About...?" Podcast, brought to you by the Liberation Comedy Project, we talk to Jeremy Sherman, self proclaimed psychoproctologist and comedic provocateur. Jeremy Sherman, PhD, is a cradle-to-grave researcher, meaning from the origins of life to our grave situation, which he argues is a product of the anxious human desire for seen-the-light last-word absolutes in all their diverse and competing revelations and manifestations. He calls himself an ironic romanticynic, romantic meaning the dream of happily ever after that lives in all of us but can't be met in reality, where all we get is the struggle for existence and our iffy educated guesswork that sometimes goes ironically wrong.

These days, Sherman is most active on his YouTube channel, Trying Beings, which means all of us trying to thrive and the people who try your patience. He's written over 1000 blog articles for Psychology Today under the titles Ambigamy Insights for the deeply romantic and deeply wary, and Jerkology; What makes some people tick like time bombs. The Psych Today editor calls his offerings "Mind candy for people who aren't afraid to think."

Much of his recent research has been in a field he has coined as "Psychoproctology," a light name for a serious subject in which one shouldn't take one's efforts too seriously. It's the careful diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of tempting absolutist tendencies.

Sherman has been the primary research partner with Harvard/Berkeley biologists for thirty years. Terrence Deacon on how life emerged from chemistry. His book on that research is Neither Ghost Nor Machine: The Emergence and Nature of Selves (Columbia University Press). His most recent book is called, "What's Up with A**holes?: How to spot and stop them without becoming one."

The Liberation Comedy Project is being incubated by Mediators Foundation (https://www.mediatorsfoundation.org/) and managed by YOUnify (https://www.younify.org/).