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Comedian Paula Poundstone Talks Rabbit Ranchers And Her Love For Hugging People

Comedian Paula Poundstone is performing at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts on Saturday, Feb. 23, at 8 p.m.

Comedian Paula Poundstone has become an iconic voice for fans of NPR’s show “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!” Hosted by Peter Sagal, Poundstone is a regular guest on the show. She started her career in stand-up as a teen and has been performing for almost 40 years. She's known for the way she interacts with the audience, asking audience members three basic questions: what's your name, where are you from and what do you for a living? 

Recently, Poundstone has been working on projects away from the stage. She released a book called “The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness,”in which she transforms her life into a series of "experiments" in the quest for happiness. She is also co-hosting the podcast “Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone,”which offers funny hour-long conversations with experts ranging from a volcanist, monopoly experts, plastic surgeons and love matchmakers.

She joined Luis Hernandez on Sundial and shared some of her most memorable stories about life as a comedian. 

Poundstone will be performing at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts on Saturday Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. WLRN is a cultural partner for the event. 

This has been edited lightly for clarity. 

WLRN: Why did you want to go into comedy?

POUNDSTONE: Who wouldn't want to go into comedy? I love the sound of laughter! Even as a kid, I loved the sound of adult laughter. From the time I was very young I guess I got a little credit for it and then really I happened to live in Boston during what some people called the "Comedy Renaissance" -- the stand-up comedy [scene] started happening in late 70s. I started [my career] in Boston '79.

You do a lot of improv and one of the things that's interesting about you is that you talk to the audience.

The audience is the best part of the whole thing. Somewhere rattling around in my head is 40 years of material and some of it is very relevant to my life at that time and my act is largely autobiographical. But my favorite part of the night is just talking to you... I ask: Where are you from? What do you do for a living? In this way little biographies of audience members emerge and I use that from which to set my sails.

Was there one time you got a weird answer?

The other night I asked a woman what she did. She says she inherited a ranch and then it turned out it was a rabbit ranch. Rabbit ranches, what? 

Tell me about your book and about the time when you started hugging everybody.

I think that was the "get warm and fuzzy" experiment. Every chapter in the book is written as an experiment with that hypothesis, the conditions, the variables and the qualitative/quantitative observations. The analysis part of each chapter is where I check back in with my regular life. One of the experiments that I did try is I had heard about a guy who hugs everyone he meets and he found success with [happiness]. So I decided to give that a shot.

The day that I did it was a "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" show day, but we were going to Red Rocks in Colorado. So I started my day really at the airport. And I'll tell you something about the TSA. They do not like hugging! So I [changed my tactic] and satisfied myself while at the airport with a handshake or really good eye contact or just plain eye contact and a smile. However, after Red Rocks in Colorado, I think there was 9,000 or 8,500 people [at the event], and afterwards I was delayed because I hugged approximately 100 audience members.