Unique expression of universal truth

Or more amusingly: ‘German Mom and Canadian Mother-in-Law’

What should we talk about first today:

• storytelling theory or

• a comedy show?

Right, comedy.

My wife and I went to see Laura Ramoso in Manhattan Sunday night. Anyone know her?

She’s a sketch comedian who does imitations—starting with caricatures of her mother, father and mother-in-law, along with several other recurring characters.

I came across her through her Instagram Reels a year or two ago, and I got sucked in. Then, I found myself thinking:

Wait, why am I connecting with this woman’s impressions of people I don’t know? And since I don’t know them, how would I know if her imitations are any good?

Example: Ramoso’s most popular character is probably German Mom, who is in fact based on her real-life German mother.

There’s also Chiara, the Italian Airline Ticket Agent, plus Canadian Mother-in-Law, Italian Dad, and a few others. Here’s her announcement where she pretended she was telling them all she was taking them on tour.

OK, a few more quick things to know before I start pretending to know anything about storytelling theory:

1. Ramoso is on an international tour right now, playing big theaters in cities including Chicago, Sydney and London. We saw her at one of two sold-out shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Impressive venues.

2. Finally, her online breakthrough came during Covid, when she started posting her characters on TikTok and Instagram. Things blew up.

3. She was born in Italy, the only child of a German mother and an Italian father. Her mother worked for the World Health Organization, so they lived all over: Cameroon, Azerbaijan, China and Vietnam—before she moved to Canada for college (okay, “university”).

Also, while I’m the one who started looking forward to Ramoso’s humor and text my wife instantly months ago when I realized she was on tour, apparently it usually works the other way around.

Most of the audience were women, and there was a running joke about all the husbands and boyfriends who had been dragged along.

OK, here’s a passage from a recent interview she did, which will serve as our bridge over to my “theory of storytelling” section.

“I remember I did the first German mom video just one random afternoon. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this is so ‘my mom’ specifically.

Like, yes, it’s a German mom, but it’s my mom. And I wonder who’s even gonna relate?

But it was kind of a lesson in the importance of specificity in comedy.”

You can tell “specificity in comedy” is important because I put it in italics.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to track down the source of a related line I remembered roughly this way:

“All good stories have one thing in common: unique expression of universal truth.”

ChatGPT was no help; in fact, I’ve apparently been talking about this quote so often and in so many places that it confidently told me that “Bill Murphy Jr. was the person who came up with it.”

But I was sure that wasn’t right, and eventually I think I found at least one source: Robert McKee’s 1997 book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting.

Here’s the quote:

“The archetypal story unearths a universally human experience, then wraps itself inside a unique, culture-specific expression.”

Pretty similar-ish, I guess.

If I had more time, I’d try to dig up similar sentiments dating back to the Greeks or something. But then again, to paraphrase Mark Twain, if I had more time, I’d also probably write a shorter newsletter.

I first read Story ... well ... (deep breath) ... just before I …

• Quit my lawyer job ...

• Packed everything I owned into a used Kia Sportage that I bought for $9,000 on eBay Motors…

• Headed across the country to become a Hollywood screenwriter …

• Took the “DC to Maine to Toronto to South Dakota to Wyoming to SF to LA” route, because you only get so many cross-country drives ...

• Arrived … drumroll … literally the day before 9/11 ...

• Transformed quickly from an aspiring screenwriter to a guy who thinks: “The defining world-historical event of my lifetime just happened, forget screenwriting, I need find a way to get involved …”

• Meandered, as a result, on a 25-year path (25 years?!!!) that was pretty interesting at times, and took me from LA to Washington to Baghdad to NYC … but had little to do with my original idea, and ultimately …

• Wound up right here, right now: 10:46 a.m. on a Wednesday, writing this while standing at a bar table outside “Bagel Supreme” (run by a very nice person I just met named “Sal”) at a shopping center called Lackawanna Station in Montclair, New Jersey (“the only mall in America made up entirely of independent businesses”).

See? Specificity and details. But also—maybe?—a few universal human experiences.

• Did you ever want to uproot yourself and follow a dream?

• Ever come up with a plan, only to have God chuckle and lead you somewhere else entirely?

• Ever marvel at how time passed so quickly that you (literally or metaphorically) repeated the amount of time you had just said — only this time in italics and bold and followed by a question mark and three exclamation points?!!!

My working theory after all this is that stories are just how we communicate.

And whether your goal in life is to be on stage at places like the Beacon Theater, or just to live a happy suburban existence that leads you to make quick insta-friends like Sal at Bagel Supreme, keep telling stories.

Find the specifics. And search for the universal truths.

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Other things worth knowing …

• ABC News: The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday in an effort to battle back inflation set off by the Iran war — the central bank’s first rate increase since July 2023. Fighting in the Middle East kept global crude prices above $105 a barrel as of Wednesday, a rise of about 50% since the war broke out in late February.

• NBC News: House lawmakers will leave Washington today until after the November midterm elections, after GOP leaders canceled votes set for Thursday. The change in schedule means House members won’t have to vote on an impeachment resolution filed by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth until after Election Day.

• AP | Truth Social: Fencing went up Wednesday around the Kennedy Center in Washington, a day after the Trump-appointed board voted to close it, which came after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Trump’s name to the building. Congress has allocated $257 million for renovations, but on Truth Social Trump wrote that if his name is not added to the building, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”

• NYT: The European Union has invited Canada to work toward becoming its first “associate member,” a title meant to underscore the nation’s growing closeness to the 27-country bloc as both face deteriorating relationships with the United States. The announcement, made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a major annual speech on Wednesday, was met with a standing ovation from the room of lawmakers.

• MarketWatch: For decades, the standard career advice was to follow the money. Now, it’s about finding job security. Monster’s recent “2026 Job Security Report” found that more than half of U.S. workers would accept a pay cut for a greater sense of job security, and 61% said they’d give up at least one aspect of their compensation or workplace experience — like bonuses, perks, and other incentives — if it made them feel more secure in their role.

• Chicago Tribune: Former President George W. Bush has a new book of oil paintings coming out in March featuring portraits of political prisoners and dissidents. “The Call of Freedom,” his third collection, will include 44 paintings and biographical sketches of each subject, with a foreword by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky.

• NBC News: Merriam-Webster is giving its dictionary another “glow-up,” adding 1,400 words and definitions including “shapewear,” “looksmaxxing,” and “meme coin.” “The new entries reflect words and meanings that have demonstrated widespread use over time, offering a window into the world today,” it said.

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Sean S on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!