So I’ve been delighted to discover there’s a growing cadre of comics learning to talk climate — and taking their acts across the country. Gast is on the vanguard of this movement. He’s comedian-in-residence at clean energy advocacy group Generation180, where he helps get other comedians up to speed through a fellowship program called the Climate Comedy Cohort.

“Think about it as a comedy writers room, but half of the writers are comedians and half the writers are climate change experts, and they are providing each other information,” said Caty Borum, executive director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University’s School of Communication, which helps run the cohort.

There’s a long history of comedians using jokes to raise awareness of serious subject matter. Few people are better versed in that history than Borum. After working as a philanthropy director and producer for Hollywood legend Norman Lear early in her career, she conducted extensive research into comedy’s power to prompt social change, ultimately writing two books.

One takeaway: Humor can serve as translation, taking technical information that’s meaningless to many people — like 2 degrees Celsius — and providing an “entryway” through jokes, Borum said. If people laugh now, they may want to learn more later.

“We as humans are emotional creatures. Part of how we are persuaded is being amused,” Borum said.

Generation180 put that principle to work in its Climate Translator videos, pairing comic David Perdue with a guy in a lab coat (not actually a scientist) to explain the economic benefits of climate-friendly electric heat pumps, among other topics.

Another takeaway from Borum’s research: Comedy tends to be more memorable than other types of storytelling.

“Marketing people have known this forever. This is why Super Bowl ads are so funny,” she told me.

I certainly won’t forget last week’s show at the Crow — especially Gast, but also Brad Einstein’s high-energy set.

He started out by telling us he was once a “perpetrator of climate misinformation,” when he was paid to write tweets for “one of the largest oil conglomerates on the planet.” Alas, he said, a nondisclosure agreement meant he couldn’t say which company.

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