Bernard Hirsch Herman Memorial Lecture: Simon Rich

The Bernard Hirsch Herman Memorial Lecture is a meaningful Newman tradition, with students benefiting from the insights of inspiring writers and innovative thinkers, which allows students to connect with a diverse range of speakers and themes during their years in the Upper School. 

 

We were thrilled to welcome this year’s Bernard Hirsch Herman Lecture Honoree, writer Simon Rich, to the Henson Auditorium. Mr. Rich is a Thurber Prize and Emmy-winning humorist who frequently contributes to the New Yorker. He has written for Saturday Night Live, Pixar, and The Simpsons, and is the creator of the TV shows Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers, which he based on his books. His other collections include Ant Farm, Spoiled Brats, New Teeth, Hits and Misses, and Glory Days. 

His stories have been translated into over a dozen languages and are regularly performed on NPR and BBC Radio 4. He has also adapted them into two Broadway shows, All In: Comedy About Love (2024-2025) and All Out: Comedy about Ambition (2025-2026.) He has written screenplays for the feature films An American Pickle starring Seth Rogen and the upcoming Artificial starring Andrew Garfield. Mr. Rich is a graduate of Harvard University, where he became president of the Harvard Lampoon, an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876. 

 

In an interview filled with insights and laughs, Mr. Rich described the important, often overlooked, role comedy has within the storytelling landscape.

 

“There’s often a sense that comedy should be about un-serious things,” Mr. Rich said, “and that drama about serious things but when you look at comedy that’s really successful, it tends to be about the same themes that drama tackles. The only difference is that drama presents serious subjects head on when comedy conceals what the theme is and hints at indirectly, allowing people to grapple with it more easily and to get at those issues in a more appealing way.”

 

When describing being a writer, Mr. Rich shared his perspective on the craft. “The profession of writing is like being blindfolded at a slot machine trying to win, but you do have an unlimited amount of quarters. The quarters represent the time you put in, and you have no idea when something is funny enough, so you just keeping pulling the lever.”

 

When asked what advice Mr. Rich would give to students interested in pursuing writing as a career, he shared the importance of not chasing targets. “Just write the stuff that you love. If it’s exactly like something somebody else has done, that’s okay. You can’t really predict how anything will land; There’s no way to make something more commercial or to game the system.”

 

“You have to do your own thing and that slot machine eventually will come up for you in surprising ways,” he went on to say. If you’re really lucky, people will remember the 1-2 things you did that are really great and the rest is invisible. It’s super lower risk when you start to view it like that. It’s different than school – it’s much closer to the casino. And that’s what makes it great.”

 

We are grateful to the Herman family who made today's event possible, for our student moderators Nola Borges ’26, Naeem Kirby ’26, Sabie DeBiase ’27, and Valerie Zhou ’27, along with Upper School English teacher Dr. Dillon Rockrohr.