Special Events

Please join your fellow OLLI members, this year's study group leaders, and the OLLI staff for an in-person gathering to celebrate the end of the spring term. Light food and drinks will be provided. 

Full event details and the link to RSVP are available to current members in the Tufts OLLI Weekly Digest.

Organized by Tufts OLLI members for Tufts OLLI members, our Community Dine Arounds return this Spring! Our Upcoming Events Are:

• Monday, June 2 at 11:30am - The Great Wall in Bedford, MA

Full event details and the link to RSVP are available to current members in the Tufts OLLI Weekly Digest.

The Tufts OLLI Team will be participating in two local events this June; Winchester Town Day on June 7 and Medford's Circle the Square event on June 21. Stop by both events to learn more about the OLLI program and other businesses and activities in the local community!

The Tufts OLLI Community Comes together to reflect and review on the 2024 - 2025 membership year and learn about plans for our upcoming 2025 - 2026 membership year!

Full event details and the link to RSVP to be shared with current members in the Tufts OLLI Weekly Digest.

The well-known comedian George Orwell said “The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him he’s already degraded.” Okay, that’s one explanation. But gagsters like Sigmund Freud, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes all had theories about humor, which means jokes are Really Important, not just a way to make someone snort up their milk. I like to call jokes “comedy in miniature.” (I like to call my cat “No! Not on the rug!”, but that tends to be situational.) Seen in a certain way – the way I see it – comedy uses the same basic components as all art forms: tension-and-resolution, pattern recognition, misdirection and surprise. For jokes, the big difference is they’re small, which makes them easier to pull apart, to see what makes them tick and why they make us laugh. Topics covered in this multimedia presentation include the Rule of 3 (Why are things funnier in threes? Really, why? I mean, why?); Is humor inherently hostile?; How jokes are related to Japanese haiku poetry; Why jokes make you smarter; Dirty jokes that aren’t dirty; and The Official Funniest Joke In The World.

About our presenter: Among David Misch’s TV and movie credits are the Emmy-nominated “Mork & Mindy,” the Emmy-losing “Duckman,” the Emmy-engorged “Saturday Night Live,” and the Emmy-ineligible “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” He’s the author of “Funny: The Book” and “A Beginner’s Guide To Corruption,” and is also a playwright, songwriter, blogger, teacher and recovered stand-up comic, and has spoken at Yale, Columbia, the Smithsonian, Oxford, CinestudioParis, University of Sydney (Australia), VIEW Cinema Conference (Torino, Italy), Raindance Film Festival (London), Austin Film Festival, American Film Institute, Disney, Sony, Lucasfilm, Midwest Popular Culture Association, USC and UCLA.

Full event details and the link to RSVP are available to current members in the Tufts OLLI Weekly Digest.