Paula Poundstone Goes to Harvard

Paula Poundstone treats crowd work like a jazz solo. Rather than relying on a structured set, she paces the stage with a microphone and a Diet Pepsi, plucking premises directly from the audience. Faced with an Ivy League crowd, she casually deflates the room’s self-importance, spinning unscripted interactions into strange tangents on prison furniture and the Marble Faun.

Filmed at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, the 1996 release marked the first time Harvard allowed its name to be used for a television broadcast. Poundstone was fresh off a stint as a backstage awards-show correspondent and the quick cancellation of her self-titled ABC variety show. Her conversational, semi-improvised approach had confused network audiences but remained a natural fit for premium cable. The performance aired heavily on HBO through the late nineties before disappearing into the vault, eventually earning a quiet reputation as a lost broadcast until it resurfaced online.