Ever hear of a 'Jollytologist®'? Well meet the world's one and only Allen Klein.
April 16, 2013
Hosted by Jonathan J. Brower, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Ever hear of a "Jollytologist®"? Well meet the world's one and only Allen Klein. Through his books and his presentations, Klein shows people worldwide how to deal with everything from traffic jams to tragedies. Klein got into this unusual line of work after his wife died of a rare liver disease at the age of 34. He saw how humor helped her, and those around her, cope. He also saw how humor helped him get through that loss. He now teaches others how to find some in trying times. Those audiences include people in 48 states as well as Israel and Australia, and clients from IBM to the IRS. Klein is an award-winning speaker and best-selling author. He is the recipient of a Toastmasters Communication and Leadership Award and a Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association. (Less than 800 of its 4,000 members have this honor.) Klein has authored, among other books, The Healing Power of Humor, Quotations to Cheer You Up, Up Words for Down Days, and The Courage to Laugh. The first book, The Healing Power of Humor, shows people how to use humor to deal with everyday trials and tribulations; the latter book, The Courage to Laugh, documents how people have used humor to triumph over tragedy. Klein has a master's degree in humor from St. Mary's College in Minnesota (and that's no joke!) And he is well suited to his subject. Years before becoming a "Jollytologist®", Klein was nicknamed the "King of Whimsy" because he designed all the children shows at CBS television in New York City. Among those productions was one you probably remember the Captain Kangaroo show. Although no longer working in the light-hearted world of children, Klein still believes that adults need to take a lesson from them and lighten up. To help adults do this, Klein is both the editor of The Mid-Month Mirth Memo e-zine, founder of International Mirth Month (every March), and President-elect of the Association of Applied and Therapeutic Humor (www.aath.org).
Human Behavior – What A Trip
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Health and Wellness Channel
Our show is all about human behavior. Most people are interested, to some degree, about human beings - themselves and others. Our topics run a large gamut and will cover anything and everything about humans and their behavior.
We will have guests on some of our shows, while some shows will involve people who call in and interact with me. Some shows will be a combination of both. We’ll hunker down and talk about human behavior.
Jonathan J. Brower, Ph.D.
Early in my childhood I experienced important people in my life being “nervous.” Not having the word "anxiety" in my vocabulary, what I experienced was very real and disturbing. In addition to the nervousness, some of these people also had low energy and were somewhat withdrawn from others.
As a ten year old I became a voracious reader of biographies and some novels that had to do with the struggles people attempted to overcome. I wanted to know about other people so that I could make sense of those in my personal sphere.
By the age of sixteen I was reading books by, and about, Sigmund Freud. I was utterly fascinated with the inner-working of the unconscious and how people suffer when they put up walls to avoid being conscious of their real feelings and impulses.
In college I was a psychology major, disliking many of the courses that were not about the human struggle toward optimal mental health. I changed my major to sociology where I began to understand the social psychology of emotions and relationships. This became my focus in graduate school as I earned my Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Human behavior is a wondrous and sprawling phenomenon. There are limitless boundaries to the way human beings can behave. For sure, people cannot not be doing behavior. On the contrary, people are always involved with behavior, whether sleeping or awake. Let's embrace the huge diversity of peoples' ways of behaving.
