The 6th Floor Blog: Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy Athlete

December 24, 2012 | Updated Read a response from Jerry Seinfeld at the end of the post.

In this weekend's cover story, Jerry Seinfeld comes across as a kind of comedy jock. As the writer, Jonah Weiner, puts it, Seinfeld "sees himself more as exacting athlete than tortured artist." He uses baseball imagery to explain his craft. He identifies with Ichiro Suzuki. ("This is the guy I relate to more than any athlete.") And he says this:

I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don't I know how to do this already? The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.

There's a hidden punchline in there: the article he's referring to is one of our own, in a manner of speaking, Daniel Coyle's cover story from the March 2007 issue of Play magazine, "How to Grow a Super Athlete." Coyle was trying to get to the bottom of why some places become hotbeds of talent and how the "dumpy" Spartak facility in Moscow in particular had produced so many top tennis players. The answer, of course, is complicated (like Russia itself), but ultimately he finds that the expression of great skill depends on the neurological process of myelination, the insulating of nerve fibers so that signals move quickly and efficiently between neurons.

Turns out that deep, focused practice leads to greater levels myelin production, better insulation. One neurologist tells Coyle, "You have to understand that every skill exists as a circuit, and that circuit has to be formed and optimized." Another says: "What do good athletes do when they train? . . . . They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire — lots of bandwidth, high-speed T-1 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us."

So, Seinfeld's been myelinating himself! (There might be some grist for a Seinfeld joke in the possibility that a New York Times story has been partly responsible for Seinfeld going about his business in such a way as to make him an appealing subject for a New York Times story.)

I have to admit to some slight skepticism, though. Can myelination really account for something as seemingly (and delightfully) mysterious as humor, as being funny? I put this to Coyle, whose story for Play led to his book, "The Talent Code." (He also breaks down Seinfeld's joke-making process on his own Web site.) His response:

The deep practice takes you only so far, especially with soft skills like comedy. As with so many other pursuits, you also need kind of adaptive, strategic component that directs and fuels the practice — the gritty guy working in a lab of his own making, like [Seinfeld] does, ruthlessly refining the craft. . . . If the metaphor for deep practice is construction (connecting wires, making them work fast), then the metaphor for the second process is building the ability to draw the construction blueprint — and to redraw it over and over, as needed. . . . So is this second-level, "blueprint-drawing" circuitry made of myelin? Neurologists I know would say: if it's about building a reliable circuit in the brain, then it's about myelin.

There you have it, I guess. Biology is destiny, and sometimes it makes you laugh.

Update: Jerry Seinfeld wrote to respond. I think he's calling me unfunny, but I'm pasting his thoughts below anyway. Thanks, I'm here all week.

OK. I am a thousand per cent sure there is not one other Comedy/Science Super Geek out there like me interested in myelination of comedianization.

But I do love this subject and must comment here as it is the only time this is ever going to come up in the Universe.

Just to clarify, building your myelin has nothing to do with being funny.

You could have my myelin. It won't help. (As evidenced by the suggestion that the connection between these two articles could be 'grist' for comedy. Oh my god, Dean, I can't even believe how unfunny that is.)

But here is how myelin works in comedy.

Being a comedian is two basic skills. One, being funny, which is a soft skill. Two, performing a comedy bit, which is a hard skill. The second part is where the myelin comes in.

Any comedian will tell you when they do two shows in one night the second show is almost always better. Why? You've got more myelin.

Doing a joke is very similar to any sport that is mostly repetitive action fine motor skills.
It's a set of mechanical brain commands the body executes almost exactly the same way every time.

Myelin doesn't make the funny, it makes the recreating of the funny at a time and place of someone else's choosing possible. Which can be a cool career if you can do it.

But most people have experienced this myelin/comedy effect.

Ever hear a joke and then tell it to every person in your office? The last few recipients always hear the best version and laugh the most. Why?

Practice, polish, myelin. And that's why it was very helpful for me to learn that being a male stand up comedian in his fifties and being a young Russian female tennis player are exactly the same thing.

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