For over 40 years, Bob Mankoff has been the driving force of comedy and satire at some of the most honored publications in America, including The New Yorker and Esquire. He has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh, and seeks every outlet to do so, from developing The New Yorker’s web presence to integrating it with algorithms and A.I. Mankoff is currently the cartoon editor at the weekly online newsletter Air Mail.
Cultural Diversity Roster
Find a Presenter
speaker
Bob Mankoff
Cartoon Editor, Air Mail
Categories :
[Sassy_Social_Share]
Bio
Full Bio
For over 40 years, Bob Mankoff has been the driving force of comedy and satire at some of the most honored publications in America, including The New Yorker and Esquire. He has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh, and seeks every outlet to do so, from developing The New Yorker’s web presence to integrating it with algorithms and A.I. Mankoff is currently the cartoon editor at the weekly online newsletter Air Mail.
A student of humor and creativity, Mankoff’s presentation largely focus on the creative process, from writing a successful New Yorker cartoon to inspiring creativity in others and enhancing ideas with A.I and big data. With his storied career of editing literally thousands of cartoons, Mankoff brings a hugely entertaining night of laughs, tips to bring humor to the workplace, and the option of participating in a cartoon caption contest.
In 2018, Mankoff launched CartoonCollections.com, a new spin on the Cartoon Bank, the world’s most successful cartoon licensing platform that he founded in 1992. At Cartoon Collections, Bob has brought together cartoons from the New Yorker and previously unavailable cartoons from National Lampoon, Esquire, Playboy, and Barron’s to create the largest cartoon licensing source on the planet.
With comedy writer and developer Jamie Brew, Mankoff runs Botnik Studios, a network of writers, artists, and programmers who create software that augments human creativity with big data analytics.
During his recent stint at Esquire, Mankoff revived the magazine’s legacy of satire and humor, editing humor pieces, providing story ideas, and drafting his own cartoons.
For twenty years as Cartoon Editor for The New Yorker, Mankoff pored over thousands of submissions each week, analyzing, critiquing, and selecting each cartoon. He mentored cartoonists, new and old, toward the laughs readers expect. In 2005, he helped start the “New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.” With 5,000 reader submissions a week and millions of entries to date, Mankoff partnered with Microsoft and Google Deep Mind to develop algorithms to help cull the funniest captions.
Bob is the author of numerous books, including his New York Times bestselling memoir, How About Never – Is Never Good For You?: My Life In Cartoons, of which the Washington Post wrote, “Mankoff’s deep understanding of humor, both its power and its practice, is the live wire that crackles through his book.” His upcoming book, Have I Got a Cartoon for You!: The Moment Magazine Book of Jewish Cartoons, will be released October, 2019.
Mankoff’s career started, unexpectedly, by quitting a Ph.D program in experimental psychology at the City University of New York in 1974. Shortly after, he began submitting cartoons to the New Yorker. Three years and over 2,000 cartoons later, he finally made the magazine and has since published over 950 cartoons. His story and day-to-day at the magazine were the focus of the 2015 HBO documentary Very Semi-Serious.
Mankoff has taught classes at Swarthmore, Fordham, and led workshops on the creative process.
Check Availability
Topics
Topics
YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR — DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT
SPEED THINKING: HOW BIG DATA AND A.I. ACCELERATE
WHAT’S SO FUNNY? HOW TO INSPIRE IDEAS, IMAGINATION & CREATIVITY
Videos
Videos
Bob Mankoff: Anatomy of a New Yorker cartoon
Bob Mankoff: A Life in Cartoons
Books
HOW ABOUT NEVER IS NEVER GOOD FOR YOU?
HAVE GOT A CARTOON FOR YOU
News
Please Contact Us For More Information
