November tends to be a dark, cold and miserable time of the year in Finland.
But there are ways to help alleviate the gloom, including Finland's burgeoning stand up comedy scene — with more and more acts, both Finnish and foreign, performing in English at various clubs and open mic nights around the country.
"For me, it's kind of like self-love, it helps me deal with this time of year. It brings up my mood, too, to make people laugh," comedian Fabien Blot tells the show.
Listen to the episode via this embedded player, on Yle Areena, via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stand up comedy in Finland is currently enjoying a post-pandemic renaissance — but when the format first arrived on Finnish shores in the early 1990s, there was a widespread impression that it would not suit the reserved and reticent nature of Finnish audiences.
Despite these initial fears, Helsinki University anthropologist Marianna Keisalo tells APN that rather than just surviving, the scene is thriving.
"There's a more diverse array of what people talk about as they go into various topics and deep personal things, so it has kind of gone from just making people laugh, to making people laugh and discussing specific topics." Keisalo says.
This sentiment is echoed by Finnish-Canadian comedian Jamie MacDonald, who notes that stand up offers a way of making the audience laugh, as well as think.
"For me as a queer comedian, I can often bring up a lot of political things in a way that doesn't make people immediately want to fight me," MacDonald says. "And laughter is such a wonderful thing that we don't really even understand, but it does so many good things for our bodies and our minds."
We also round up the rest of the week's news from Finland, and give our weekly tip for what to watch on Yle Areena.
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This week's show was presented by Ronan Browne and the sound engineer was Tuomas Vauhkonen.
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