Originally recorded on July 31, 2019.

James Geary is the deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and the author of Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It, in which he explores every facet of wittiness, and how it is more than simply being funny.

Geary is also the author of I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World; Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists; the New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism; and The Body Electric: An Anatomy of The New Bionic Senses. He has performed, given talks and/or conducted writing workshops at, among other venues, TED, Live from the New York Public Library, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Sun Valley Writer’s Conference, the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Hay-on-Wye Festival, the Genoa Science Festival, and the Seoul Digital Forum.

The former editor of the European edition of Time magazine, Geary has served as deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation since 2012, where he is editor of Nieman Reports, oversees other Nieman print and online publications, and manages a range of duties related to the Nieman Fellowship program and the foundation’s journalism outreach efforts.

Geary is a graduate of Bennington College.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.