Summary

Professor Frank shares his journey from growing up in Queens to working at Saturday Night Live and starting his own company, Laugh MD. He discusses how his love for comedy helped him navigate a tough neighborhood and how he found his passion for film and writing. He also talks about the challenges he faced in the entertainment industry and the inspiration behind Laugh MD, a platform that provides comedy videos for hospitals. LaughMD is a digital health platform that uses comedy to help patients manage pain and reduce stress. The app provides access to a library of comedy content that patients can watch during medical procedures or recovery. The laughter triggers the release of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, which lower pain perception and stress levels. LaughMD has conducted studies that show significant reductions in pain and stress among patients who use the app. The company is currently self-funded and is in talks with hospitals and oncology clinics to implement the app in their facilities.

Takeaways

• Professor Frank's love for comedy helped him navigate a tough neighborhood and inspired his career in entertainment.
• He worked at Saturday Night Live as an intern and later as a writer, experiencing the challenges and tensions within the show.
• He started his own company, Laugh MD, which provides comedy videos for hospitals to bring laughter and joy to patients.
• Laugh MD has a team of world-class advisors and is focused on curating funny and uplifting content for healthcare settings. LaughMD is a digital health platform that uses comedy to help patients manage pain and reduce stress.
• The app provides access to a library of comedy content that patients can watch during medical procedures or recovery.
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, which lower pain perception and stress levels.
• Studies have shown significant reductions in pain and stress among patients who use the LaughMD app.
• The company is currently self-funded and is in talks with hospitals and oncology clinics to implement the app in their facilities.

Sound Bites

"I had more comedy records than music records when I was a kid because I just couldn't get enough of comedy."

"Laughter is the best medicine. Why do they show things that aren't comedy here?"

"Comedy has always been my hobby and maybe I can take a stab at that."

"Of the 24 who watched the half an hour of comedy, I believe it was 8% of them had a second heart attack within six months and of those who did not watch comedy it was around 50%. So the difference was striking just from a half an hour of comedy."

"If you're a doctor or a healthcare person, just write to info at laughMD and we'll send you a copy of the software for free."

"Someday soon they're gonna say, and get some laughs. Laughter's good for you."

Links

LaughMD: https://www.laughmd.com/

Please leave us a review: https://podchaser.com/AdventuresOnTheCanDo

Think Like a Startup Founder (book): https://www.manning.com/books/think-like-a-startup-founder

Jothy’s website: https://jothyrosenberg.com

The Who Says I Can’t Foundation: https://whosaysicant.org

Jothy’s TEDx talk on disabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNtOawXAx5A

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background

02:55 Discovering a Love for Comedy

09:05 Working at Saturday Night Live

14:39 The Almost Cancellation of SNL

22:58 Bringing Laughter to Hospitals

26:26 Introduction to LaughMD and the Power of Comedy in Pain Management

27:14 The Potential of Combining Comedy with Other Therapies

28:39 Funding and Expansion Plans for LaughMD

29:56 Implementation of LaughMD in Hospitals and Clinics

30:45 Ease of Use and Accessibility of LaughMD

31:15 The Role of Hospitals in Promoting LaughMD

32:14 Personal Connection: Jothy Rosenberg's Experience with Pain and Comedy

35:35 Exploring Other Activities that Help Occupy the Mind during Pain

36:40 Research Studies on the Effects of Comedy on Pain and Health

37:28 The Importance of Live Comedy and Shared Laughter

40:32 The Role of Grit and Support in Entrepreneurship

43:45 The Vision for LaughMD and the Future of Comedy in Healthcare

And here's Professor Frank. Hello. Good to see you.

Hey! Hi Jothy, how are you doing?

I'm doing well. I love seeing all these awards and statues and everything. And as we get a chance to hear your story, everybody watching and listening will understand. Of course, the people listening are not seeing these cool awards, but trust me, they're cool. So as we go, I may not always call you professor, but I'm very, you know, I'm.

I'm thrilled that you're a professor, but I'll call you Frank. So Frank, I'd love for you to tell us all where you're originally from and where you live now.

Frank is fine.

I'm originally from New York City. I grew up until I was a teenager in Queens and then moved into Manhattan when I started attending New York University.

And now.

And now I am in sometimes sunny Los Angeles looking out at the coastline here.

Yeah, so you.

Do you want to see my exact address or something? I mean, I said, do you need my exact address or something?

Pardon?

Well, actually I do, Frank, because everybody on here is going to get a thank you on our show, is going to get a thank you gift, which is an autographed copy of my book, which is coming out at the end of June called Think Like a Startup Founder.

Huh?

Wow! Okay, thank you very much. I have a lot of autographed books here on my shelf, as you can see. Rob Tursick and who else? Charlie Fink and several others. Doctors, yeah.

So.

Okay.

So yeah, so you'll add mine to the pile and they'll all be really, really famous people. OK, so but your parents were immigrants, correct?

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, my mom is from Quito, Ecuador. My dad's parents were from the south of Italy and I learned neither language because the only language they had between them was English.

Well, you're an exact poster child for the melting pot.

That's true. I'm melting some pot in the back room right now.

All right, so tell us the story of how you started out in comedy because obviously we're all going to figure out that you're naturally pretty funny.

We're not all going to figure that out only the the most Generous of your viewers will think that But so okay, so here are my Let's see, where is it? Okay. Here are my some of my records from I was a kid like Monty Python and a rare Woody Allen record and Things like that and I basically had

more comedy records than music records when I was a kid because I just couldn't get enough of comedy. I felt like comedy was the coolest thing because I grew up in a very tough neighborhood in South Queens. The neighborhood bully, not kidding, John Gotti Jr., kind of a tough guy. And so it was a very tough environment and I would get beaten up a lot until I started to use self -effacing humor because you...

You know, they just didn't want to beat up a kid who was already making fun of himself.

That's funny, but a little sad.

Yeah, well that's okay. I think Gotti Jr. is in jail for life now, so I don't feel too bad.

Well, good, I hope it didn't hurt you too much.

Well, one time we were, I was, I'd gotten a new firebird and I was, you know, driving down the main street, Crosby Boulevard in Queens there and.

I would always take off from the light really fast. It had a stick shift and all that. And so the car next to me then pulls up next to me as we get to the next light and it's John Gutting Jr. and he waves a pistol at me and he says, I'm going to blanking kill you. Because apparently I had shown him up in front of his friends who were in the car.

who were all like, yeah, we're gonna get you, man. And so I took off at the red light and a chase ensued and I was putting every gear on that firebird to use as I was chased up and down the streets of Howard Beach. And finally I like, you know, backed into a driveway and ducked down and they went whizzing past me and.

I had adrenaline coursing through my veins for about the next five years.

I'm surprised that with all that chasing going on, you guys weren't both chased by the cops.

I have another story like that.

Okay, well, okay. But so you told us about the records, okay. But now, you know, how that gets you into comedy. I mean, you thought it was the coolest thing. And so and you were good at self effacing humor.

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. I don't suppose we can cut for a minute because I just spilled my water bottle all over my...

That's it.

Yeah, because I go like this and I'll see it and I'll edit it out.

Great, thank you so much. I just spilled all over some very important papers.

That's what I get for being Italian and talking with my hands. and on some electronics too. Perfect.

If you hear a loud buzzing noise and me screaming, it's because I'm being electrocuted.

Great, just great.

Okay.

Okay, I'm gonna wave again, so I'll see that bracket. Okay, so anxious to hear how you went from the records to self -effacing humor to keep John Gotti Jr. from beating the crap out of you to trying to make it your career is the next step I was curious about.

sure. So I started to write comedy as a hobby and I wrote a funny column for the school newspaper and I realized that I was just never going to go anywhere.

I was trying to be a psychologist. That's what I was studying for, to be a psychology, you know, I was studying psychology. And then one day, a professor, Darrell Taylor walks in and I owe my life to this, to this teacher because he said, well, you know, and this is a course called film and the politics of everyday life, right? And so he said, well,

and started, you know, through way of three and a half years of psychology and started studying film, took all the courses I could take there at Queens College, which I loved. And I'm still in touch with all my friends there, transferred to New York University and at New York University, you had to have an internship. And so they slated me to be on some like goofy morning show that I had no interest in. And I was really depressed about it. And I was telling,

a friend of mine about it and she said, well, what do you really want to do? And I said, well, you know, comedy has always been my hobby and maybe I can take a stab at that. And she said, well, I know the talent coordinator at SNL. Do you want to work there? And I said, you're kidding, of course. And I go and I interview there. And, you know, I was from a lower middle class background. My dad was

very sick and in the hospital, you know, all of his medical bills over the years had sort of, you know, impoverished us. And so they were like, okay, all right, we feel bad for you. Fine. But I've got the son of the president of the network wants this internship and I've got Al Roker, the weatherman, his daughter wants this internship. So why should I give it to you? And I said, well,

I'm the politically safe choice, then you can tell both of them no. That you gave it to some poor Latino, you know, kid. And he was like, good save. Okay, you got it. And I started. No, this was some person who was like in personnel at NBC at 30 Rock. And I only met that person once and I don't remember their name, but again, grateful to them.

This wasn't Lorne Michaels making the decision, was it?

OK, so you got your start. But you're still a student. This was an internship, right? Yeah, so for how long? For like six months or less?

Correct.

I was on that show from, I think I started with them in like November of 1980, around there. And then I stayed on.

And then I would work, I was the assistant to the associate producer in Chartered Talent. But where I found myself gravitating towards was with the writers and I'd hang with the writers. So I started to write down little jokes on slips of paper and then hand it to my boss who'd go, yeah, that's funny. You should show it to the head writer. And like one joke was, remember how they would zoom in on a particular person in the audience in the old days and they would put a caption under that person.

So mine had zoomed in on a particularly attractive blonde haired woman and it said, enjoys going down on elevators.

And they went, yeah, you're, you know, you may be a kid, but you're pretty funny. So I wrote a sketch for them. And here's proof for your visual viewers. And I was there, this is one of the original SNL scripts, right? So I was working with the writers. So I was like taking notes on the different sketches and things and, you know, advising them from a young person's point of view. And it was the, the year after the Belushi crowd.

Yeah.

It was Eddie Murphy, Denny Dillon, Joe Piscopo, Gail Mathias, Gilbert Godfrey, and just the cast was a mess. They were a mess. The previous cast, everybody knew each other. Everybody had worked together on National Lampoon Radio. They had done Second City together. They had been the not ready for primetime players. They had done sketches for years. And this group was like the most, you know,

network executive decision cast you can possibly imagine where they went, okay, the last cast had a black guy, we'll get one black guy. The last cast had a tall guy, we'll get one tall guy, right? It was four men, three women. Okay, we'll do that. You know, it was just completely artificially composed. So it was very tense and very uncomfortable for everybody. And people were like, who are you? And...

you know, why should that person be in that sketch and all that stuff, right? So there's a lot of conflict. And I was there and I had written a sketch for them called Raging Elephant, which was a spoof of both Raging Bull and the Elephant Man. And so Raging Bull was about a famous boxer, Jake LaMotta, and Elephant Man was about a horribly deformed man.

that is found like in a circus and given some dignity, right? And so my little sketch was about a guy finds this horribly deformed boxer and raises him up to be a contender. And everybody thought, okay, this is really good, because it ended with, I am not an animal, I am a contender.

And Sarah was like, that's pretty funny. Yeah. And Eric Idle was going to be the host of the show. No, sorry. Graham Chapman from Monty Python was going to be the host that week. So it was like me, 19, my sketch, Graham Chapman from Monty Python, pinch me. This is too good to be true. And they told me that, you know, on a Saint -Lenet. So I'm like floating on air. And they said, you know what? There's going to be a sketch where Charlie Rocket gets shot.

because we have Charlene Tilton on and she's the star of this show called Dallas, right? And it was like this late night, the primetime soap opera about an oil family, right? And so Charlene Tilton goes on and on that show they had a Who Shot JR theme. And so our writers came up with Who Shot CR, meaning Charlie Rocket, who is a big, tall, gregarious,

guy and these were the days of cocaine where our writers called it the thinking man's decongestant and we would have conferences on Bolivian marching powder and they hand Charlie Rocket like a big schnauzer full of cocaine and he's all of a sudden like really you know feisty and at the end of the show when

everybody comes out at the very end of the show on SNL and say, goodnight, I had a great time, I love you guys, take care, and the band plays and all that kind of stuff. The sketch beforehand had taken 35 seconds too short, been 35 seconds too short, all the running around from Charlie being shot. And so I'm in the control room, the director, Dave Wilson, leans over the microphone and because everybody else is outside,

Trying to figure out where we're all going to go out for for drinks afterwards including the sensor Nobody hears Davey Wilson say To Joe Piscobo Joe we ran 35 seconds short I need you to ad lib for 35 seconds and Joe Piscobo's sure no problem He turns to coked up Charlie rocket who says well Charlie you were shot in the last sketch and how do you feel about it and

and he's got seven seconds to get from where he's standing out here past all the people that are gathered and going like, great show to get to the...

desk around Two other desks to get to the desk that has the big red mushroom button on it It's about the size of a coaster, right? Can't miss it. And so he's like, excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me Pardon me art Garfunkel had been the musical guest he like, you know, excuse me, mr. Garfunkel and He's got seven seconds to do it and he just kind of gets around everybody and he just is able to go BAM right onto the desk with the mushroom button

But instead of hitting the button he hits next to the button and then he hits the button and so what goes out over the air is Can I use the f -word on this? Okay, so what goes out over the air is That seven seconds of silence right after I want to know who the fuck

Yeah.

and then seven seconds of silence. So if you were sitting at home with your buddy, you would turn to your friend and go, dude, did he just say fuck? Yeah, man, he just said fuck. Man, that's fucked up, right? And so there was no denying, like, did I just hear? No, because you heard fuck and then seven seconds of silence, right?

Did he get, I hope he didn't get fired for that.

and

he got so fired. In fact, they wake up the president of NBC. He is told what happened. He says, get me my limo. And he shows up in a trench coat and pajamas like two hours later. And we all just had to sit there quietly in the offices and wait for him to show up. And he gets there and he.

and the producer, Gene DeManion and the associate producer, Audrey Perdickman, all go in the office and we can't hear what they're saying, but arms are flailing and people are screaming and he gets red in the face and it's there for at least an hour and 3 .30 in the morning, finally, he storms out without looking at any of us. Gene DeManion remains in the office and Audrey Perdickman says, we're on hiatus for the...

following three weeks, maybe more. And they wanted to take us off the air altogether. They just wanted to cancel the show at that moment. But she negotiated it down to a three week hiatus and they were gonna revamp the show and all that. But then the following week a writer's strike hit and so the show never came back on the air. So I was actually there for the one time, Saturday Night Live was almost canceled.

And so had Lorne Michaels already taken his leave or where was he? okay.

Yes. He was like, I remember correctly on like a safari in Africa.

Yeah. OK, so.

You graduate from school and you're out and you're doing stuff. And I'm missing a bunch of stuff, but eventually you came up with some ideas that made you start this company. Maybe you want to, before we get to that, maybe you want to fill in a few more of the details between internship while still at NYU and then.

and then this many years later.

Well, I thank you, Jothi. I went from doing that to I worked on a movie, a little independent film at the time called Ghostbusters. And I got to work with the writers on that as well, Harold Ramis, who I pointed out, you know, Harold, we're doing...

story that's different than any other story before because there's the seven archetypal stories and one of them is man versus god god wins but we're doing man versus god man wins that's i don't think that's been done before and he said that's very interesting anyway give me some coffee so

It was great, you know, obviously a big hit and that kind of propelled me to get on other film sets and things. I went to grad school at Columbia to learn writing and producing. And then I started to make films. My thesis film at Columbia was picked up immediately by Showtime as a short to play between the features. And then I started to make features for HBO and many, many different networks. And I started to sell those films to Channel 4 in England.

Canadian broadcasting, Japanese TV, and I just had this good life of having an office on Broadway and making all those films that won all those little trophies over there. And it was great for a long time. But at the same time, like when I was at SNL, my dad was unfortunately dying from cancer.

And so I'd work on the show during the day and then at night I'd go and visit him. And I wished that we could play SNL on the TV that he was watching 24 seven, which was showing loud commercials and you know, news that would make him upset and stuff like that. And I just, you know, remember saying like, laughter is the best medicine. Why do they show things that aren't comedy here, you know? And.

As time went by the same thing happened years later when my stepdad was in the hospital and he died from cancer as well and The TV was getting worse and there was things like you know that that dr Phil show or whatever Jerry something Jerry Springer and people will be throwing chairs at each other very violent and disconcerting and I was like poor bill has to sit through this and Wouldn't it be so great?

if we could somehow get him some comedy, right? And then finally, when my youngest brother passed away in hospital, I was able to convince Kaiser Permanente to, by this time I had formed a company that was making short films, like the ones I had sold and more and more and more of them for the cable networks. And then for mobile phones,

So I had a whole library of these short comedy films and I convinced Kaiser Permanente, please here, put a channel of fun little movies onto your television sets. And then they'll at least have an option of like G rated funny short films. And they said, okay, and they did it. And that's how Laugh MD was born.

And so it's grown. I mean, you've got a staff, you've got some sales. I mean, tell us how it is going. I mean, it's a great idea.

Well, the staff is world class. The man who you associate with humor and medicine, Dr. Patch Adams, the real guy, not Robin Williams, but the real guy who they made the movie about, he's on the advisory board. We've got Dr. Sandra Kufel, who ran a wing of Scripps Hospital before she was 30 and has three MedTech startups that she's founded and funded. We've got Paul Miratori, who...

has led many very successful and profitable companies. And he's in New York City. We've got Rick Barnett, who was the president of five different hospitals and the American Kidney Foundation. And, who, Dr. Amitabha Mazumder, who was one of the pioneers of stem cell use for

cancer patients and is in fact a founder of the oncology institute which has you know 30 locations just in California and 100 locations worldwide So that's who's on the team it's amazing dr. Joshua Cohen who Is our lead psychologist and he's the inventor of film and video based therapy. So yeah real amazing people

So who buys it? Is it like the Kaiser Permanente model? It's the hospitals or?

Yeah, exactly. It's a B2B. So it's an app that plays on phones, tablets, computers. And we select comedy videos from places like YouTube. We curate them, make sure they're not violent or sexually based or, you know, cursing or sad. Exactly. Yeah, they have to be funny, obviously. And so we have we have now about 30 ,000 videos in the queue and...

or sad.

the patient or the healthcare provider gets to watch those and get the benefits of endorphins and serotonin and dopamine increases, which lower pain perception, lower stress, amongst other things. There's over 400 studies that have been isolated by Dr. Ron Burke at Johns Hopkins. So, you know, there's 400 studies about a...

particular drug, you'd think people would use it, but nobody has until now.

If you could get, if you could combine two things, if you could take, if you could get a golden retriever that could tell jokes.

I'd sign him up!

And then, yeah, well, the little guy who's been not so little, who's on my elbow is a golden retriever. He's very funny, actually. But seriously, yeah, right. That would be great. So have you been self -funded? Have you had to raise money?

Who is his agent?

we have been self -funded. We have not yet raised money. Paul Muratori is going to lead us through that. And we've been able to do this just on the, the kind hearts and enthusiastic minds of the people like, David Israelian who has started three successful companies. He's a programmer. He started a company called NeuroTree, for example. And so.

He is programming the new version of the app from a psychologist's point of view and helping us get the billing together for that. So we're super blessed to have people like him or his partner, Aruthi Gupti. Yeah.

And are you staying local? Are you just in California? Are you branched out over the country?

We're in the works with places like the NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center. We did do our first, two of our first four studies were at USC where I was a professor. The big study that's coming out is one that was put together for us by...

Dr. Joshua Cohen and his dad, Dr. Joseph R. Cohen, who is head of pain management at A .T. Still University in Phoenix, Arizona. Not Phoenix, but not Scottsdale, Mesa, Mesa, Arizona. So thanks to them, we'll have a study published and it's gonna be, you know, hopefully in use there.

We have Upstate New York Medical Center that has said that they want it. So anywhere in the United States, we're happy to do it.

But it needs, so it's not, you know, it's somehow connected to the infrastructure of the hospital that they're in. What happens when they...

No, it's standalone turnkey solution. All they have to do is either recommend that you put it on your phone, for example, or recommend that you use one of their iPads. I have.

Okay.

Somewhere I've got a card from Cedar Sinai where my father -in -law was and that they just give you a little card on your bedside that says use this app check it out and you can put it on your own phone or you can they can hand you a tablet so it's gonna be the same thing.

And then it's just like any app you buy for your phone or iPad and you write.

That's the Sea of Sinai thing, yeah. So we'll do the same thing.

We can put a QR code on it now.

Yes, they should have done that. Yeah, exactly.

So then they've got it and they can take it home. And when they're still recovering at home or they're still in pain at home, they can still use it.

Mm -hmm. Yes. Yes, exactly.

And but they've but you're you're I would call it your channel. Your channel is the hospitals. They're the ones that are telling people about it and recommending it.

Yes.

hospitals, oncology clinics. So we're going to install it at the Oncology Institute, at least one of their locations, thanks to Dr. Mazumder.

This is great. So what's your shoe size?

11

I wear a 13, but my foot got, my foot got wider, a lot wider after I became someone that was only on one foot. And that's, that's not surprising, is it?

Prof. Frank (32:11.47)

I didn't know you were only on one foot.

Well, so there's a connection here, right? So yeah, I lost my leg when I was 16 from cancer. And so, and then I was in massive, massive pain for months. And there wasn't much, they were really against using narcotics. This was this one weird phase where they didn't want to use narcotics even for real serious pain.

Okay.

Prof. Frank (32:27.854)

I'm so sorry.

And the man -made drugs for pain other than narcotics are bad, are not very good at all. And I use rock and roll to try to get through it. But I would have really enjoyed laughing if that would have been possible.

Mmm.

Right? Yeah. I'm so sorry. Wow.

No, no, it's just how, I mean, it's been 52 years. So yeah, it's a long, long time ago. Yeah, it was when I was 16.

okay. Alright. Well.

So your listeners were good at math, just figured out your edge.

Yeah, I will be 68 in a short, a very short while. Yeah.

Folks, if you can't see Jothi, he does not look 68. I thought he would be like 57 or something. So, wow.

well, thanks. But it's all because I just the way the way I find people recover from that kind of disability, hitting them is through doing well at high challenge physical activity sports usually. And so I became a skier, a long distance biker, open water swimmer.

And I now help kids get into that through my Who Says I Can't Foundation. But we're digressing. This was really about how I want to see this get in more places. Because when you're in a lot of pain, you can't, well, I should speak for myself, but I have talked to others. It's very hard to read a book because your brain isn't.

Wow!

Mm.

divorced enough from the pain. I found it hard to watch TV for the same reason. But playing an intense game, so like what I would do is I would say to one of my parents or brothers or sisters or somebody, hey, play this card game with me. And there's something about the card game that occupies your brain. I found that.

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

doing a puzzle, it seems like it's a quiet activity, but it was completely helpful. I mean, it would consume the brain when reading a book or watching TV wouldn't work against the pain. And I'll bet the people that have studied the laughter effect on pain have probably studied it.

Mm -hmm.

Mmm.

broadly and found that there are other things that can help occupy your mind when you're otherwise dealing with pain.

yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's amazing how one of the preeminent researchers on this is Dr. Lee Burke at Loma Linda University. And this is almost unbelievable, but you can see that this study made the front page of the Los Angeles Times. He took 48 patients who had had a heart attack. 24 of them watched half an hour of comedy a day, their choice.

comedy. 24 of them did not. Of the 24 who watched the half an hour of comedy, I believe it was 8 % of them had a second heart attack within six months and of those who did not watch comedy it was around 50%. So the difference was striking just from a half an hour of comedy.

We did our study at USC, at the Norris Cancer Center with Dr. Jacek Pinsky. let's see, 91 % of the patients with pain said that we lowered their pain and 89 % said that we lowered their stress levels. So that's hugely effective. 91 % is better than aspirin.

Yeah, I absolutely believe it. And I think that, and you should, I think here's what I want you to do though. I want you to go back to Saturday Night Live and say, the average skits are not funny enough to help people get out of pain.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, they have not had a lot of winners. They do, they do. When I see a really good one, because obviously I watch, you know, every episode on YouTube for free. Well, on YouTube for YouTube premium without commercial. It's great. But yeah, I watch everything and, you know.

Yes. Yeah.

But then again, Jothi, keep this in mind, you are seven times more likely to laugh in the presence of another person than you are when you're just sitting there by yourself. So maybe, you know, watch it with your wife or something.

we do watch it together. I thought you meant like if you were in the live audience, you would laugh more.

Well, that's a live audience, right? You know, you and your wife.

Yeah, right, right. But I mean, we're both watching it sitting side by side and as opposed to in the live audience, they're facing you and you're facing them.

Right. it's much better in a live audience. It's much better in a live audience. Yeah. Have you ever gone to a comedy club, seen a comedian and then looked at his stuff after or their her stuff afterwards and then went, boy, I remember being so much funnier.

I have the experience of seeing some, I do like stand -up comedy and I have seen some very funny stuff. But I don't recall ever looking at it later. So I don't have that comparison. I mean,

Hmm.

Mmm. Well, you're lo -

Still to this day, my favorite comedian of all times is George Carlin.

Mm -hmm. Woohoo! Yep. Yep. Yeah.

phenomenal. He could make the process of getting on the plane hilarious, just step by step. It's just amazing, the creativity and the timing and everything.

Absolutely.

Wait, as he said, it's time for everyone to get on the plane and he says, screw you, I'm getting in the plane.

I'm sorry.

I don't know, just you echoing him is so funny.

I know, he's amazing. Yeah, he's amazing. I did meet him once. He was a sweet, gentle, quietly spoken man, kind, like you wouldn't believe how kind he was. And I was so lucky to have met him. So yeah, he's great.

So Frank, you've done a lot of interesting things. You've started this company. And I uniformly find everybody that is a founder, does a startup, has a lot of grit. That's what keeps them going. That's how it happens. Where do you think your grit comes from?

Hmm. I get the most support in the world from my life partner, Tasha Hinchliff. She is someone who watches me go up to my office every day at eight or nine in the morning and sit here sometimes until 10 o 'clock at night and just grind it out with the team, you know, finding content, finding people.

fielding requests from people like yourself, you know, dealing with the programming, dealing with the corporate issues, all that stuff. And Tasha is an angel from God. Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm, that's wonderful.

I, my Carol is the same. And I, she's my wife. And I, the dedication in all my books is to her that I just say she's my rock. Yeah, she's my rock.

Well, don't let your wife.

I know, okay.

Aww, that's cool.

Well, listen, Professor Frank, I am so thrilled we got connected and that we know each other now and that we're friends for life. I think that, yeah. Frank, I take it back. What else would you like to tell us, Frank?

Yes.

This is it, we're done.

okay, alright then. Yes?

What do I have to tell you? I'd like to tell you that if you're a doctor or a healthcare person, just write to info at laughMD and we'll send you a copy of the software for free.

Perfect. I will put that in. I'll make sure that goes in. I will edit out that previous part where I started to say goodbye. But I think this has been great. And I don't like to make these too long. 45 minutes is about the longest I like to make them. And we're at 42.

Yes.

As I piss off

Wow! Okay, the time has flown. You're a very good host, Jothy.

Thank you. Well, you're a very great guest. And I think people are going to enjoy this. And we will get it out there as soon as we can. But I'm going to stop this.

Well, thank you.

That's our, sorry, I was just gonna say that's our objective as well, to get in and out there to as many people as possible. Someday, my dream is that now when you go to the doctor and they say, well, you need to eat right, get some sleep, and that's new, right? They didn't used to say things like that. Sometimes they say, get some exercise. Someday soon they're gonna say, and get some laughs. Laughter's good for you.

That would be wonderful. That's a great dream to have. That is a great dream to have. All right, I'm going to stop this.

Yeah. Thanks. Thank you.