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Need a good laugh? Try Chicago.

The Humor Research Lab at the Leeds School of Business at University of Colorado Boulder (and doesn't that sound like it was created by The Onion?) concocted an algorithm to rate America's funniest cities.

Humor researchers calculated factors like the number of working comics and comedy clubs per capita, funny local tweeters and visits to funny websites. They asked people to assess what they called their "need for levity."

Adrian Ward, a co-author of the study, says it's not all algorithms. "A city's sense of humor is a living, breathing thing created by everything from coffee shop conversations," he says, "to the laughter that erupts at comedy clubs."

Chicago ranked first, not surprisingly. It's home to great comic institutions like Second City, The Onion, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, and the Chicago City Council.

Boston is No. 2. Boston is a lot like Chicago, but smaller and better educated.

Washington, D.C., is fourth, perhaps because Americans like to watch the antics of official Washington the way they laugh at monkeys in a zoo who fling feces and scratch themselves.

Portland, Ore., is fifth; a nice nod to an engaging place. An unnamed Portlandian told researchers, "We enjoy Darth Vader wearing a kilt riding a unicycle playing the bagpipes."

Make that a line-caught, free-range, shade-grown unicycle in Portland.

New York is sixth. I bet it would be higher if they'd considered just Brooklyn, which, like Chicago, is it's own punch line. But it's too expensive to be funny in Manhattan.

Nothing deflates laughs like algorithms and analysis. But you might notice that all the cities atop this humor survey possess personality. You wouldn't confuse Chicago with Portland; or Portland with Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are also among the top 10. Each of those cities puts a stamp on the people who live there, and humor is an important part of character.

I spent a lot of time last summer with a loved one in the intensive care unit of a Chicago hospital. One middle of the night, I came downstairs to the 24-hour Starbucks. Everyone in line looked wet-eyed and anxious. Spending all night in a hospital didn't seem like a happy occasion for anyone.

A Motown hit came on. And when Martha and the Vandellas sang that summer's here and the time is right, all us strangers joined in to sing a line to make us smile: "They're dancin' in Chicaaago ..."

Media industry veteran Jarl Mohn will be NPR's new CEO, the organization's board of directors has announced.

Mohn, 62, currently sits on the board of directors at several media organizations, including Scripps Networks Interactive and Web analytics company comScore. He is also on the boards of KPCC Southern California Public Radio and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Announcing the hire, Kit Jensen, who chairs NPR's board of directors, said Mohn has "an ability to find nuanced and new ideas." He is slated to start work at NPR on July 1.

The move to NPR represents something of a return for Mohn — he worked as a radio disc jockey for about two decades before joining MTV as an executive in 1986. He later became president and CEO of E! Entertainment Television before moving on to other enterprises, including a stint on the board of XM Radio.

Mohn will be NPR's fourth permanent or acting CEO since January 2009, following a procession of executives who served relatively short tenures: Vivian Schiller (2009-2011), Gary Knell (2011-2013) and Paul Haaga Jr., who became the company's interim CEO last fall.

Knell left in August to become president and CEO at the National Geographic Society, which he said at the time was an opportunity "I could not turn down."

The transition from Knell to Haaga the following month coincided with an announcement that NPR planned to offer voluntary buyouts to its employees in an effort to balance its budget.

Those financial issues are not yet settled: NPR's budget for the current fiscal year includes a projected "operating cash deficit of $6.1 million, or 3 percent of revenues," according to a note from Jensen explaining the buyout plan.

Here's how Mohn's career is described by his profile page at comScore:

"Mr. Mohn was the founding President of Liberty Digital Inc., a publicly traded subsidiary of Liberty Media Group involved in interactive television, cable television networks and Internet enterprises, and served as its Chief Executive Officer from June 1999 to March 2002.

Prior to founding Liberty Digital, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of E! Entertainment Television. From 1986 to 1989, Mr. Mohn was Executive Vice President and General Manager of MTV and VH1. His professional career also includes twenty years in radio."

"What's going through your mind when you're doing that... or do you not think at all?" Those words, familiar to any teenager and parent, get yelled at Teddy (Jack Kilmer) about halfway through Palo Alto. Teddy, still in high school, is on probation after his second arrest, his final chance to get his act together before facing time in a juvenile detention center. The line, though, could have been directed at nearly any of the teenagers in Gia Coppola's thoughtful debut feature, which offers an empathetic account of teenage tribulations but also makes a good case for why the phrase "troubled youth" is needlessly tautological.

Coppola, who here extends her family's predilection for producing talented directors one generation further, seems to have taken most from her Aunt Sofia's films. Palo Alto shares the soft visual tones of Somewhere and Lost in Translation, their patient pacing, and their tendency to linger on mundane moments that, in accumulation, offer a comfortable intimacy. When Coppola rests her camera on Teddy sullenly playing his guitar, or on the timid April (Emma Roberts) giving herself pep talks in front of the mirror in her room, there's no overt purpose to the shots, just a steady portrayal of the inchoate emotions of youth.

Coppola captures her characters only halfway to adulthood: they drink too much, experiment sexually, and put on an air of maturity, but their bedrooms are still filled with elementary school photos and childhood decorations. Their reckless actions can reflect an abundance of confidence—they drive drunk and cut down trees in cemeteries—but, just as often, they only highlight a persistent immaturity, such as when Fred (Nat Wolff), Teddy's best friend, draws sexual pictures in a children's book at the library.

Palo Alto, which is based on a collection of short stories by James Franco, displays a refreshing lack of handwringing over these acts. Coppola knows there's a difference between acting out and behaving immorally, just as there's a difference between the absent but loving parents who populate the movie and adults like Mr. B (James Franco), April's teacher, who flirts and sleeps with his students.

The greatest respect the film shows its young characters is giving them the benefit of the doubt—the acknowledgement that bad behavior doesn't necessarily make them bad people. But Coppola also knows better than to let them off the hook completely. At one key moment, we learn that one character may have committed a horrible crime. And while Coppola leaves open the possibility that it was just an awful thought, thankfully never acted upon, the suggestion that the line between youthful debauchery and immorality may not be so far off haunts the film.

That said, Palo Alto's portrayals of the tender innocence of youth are ultimately better realized than its darker moments, which quickly become too angst-ridden, as if Coppola feels the need to overemphasize the inner turmoil of her characters. Freddy in particular remains unfortunately one-dimensional in his displays of exaggerated manic behavior. The other characters' actions reveal a fraught internal thought process, but Freddy's only suggest an out of control id.

That unfettered energy, of course, is part of being a teenager too, as are the parties, the drinking, and the sexual exploration, all of which take up a large part of Palo Alto. But the movie's happiest moments tellingly come when the characters are among younger kids, away from the pressures to act beyond their age. As a coming-of-age story, Palo Alto doesn't take the loss of innocence lightly; on the contrary, it's a film about the desperate need to keep some of it intact.

Ask Americans to describe themselves, and chances are you'll get adjectives like "energetic," "friendly" or "hard-working."

In Japan, the responses would likely be much different. "Dependent on others" and "considerate" might pop up, studies have found.

Since the 1990s, psychologists have known that people in East Asia think differently, on average, than those in the U.S. and Europe. Easterners indeed tend to be more cooperative and intuitive, while Westerners lean toward individualism and analytical thinking.

Now psychologists have evidence that our ancestors planted these cultural differences hundreds of years ago when they chose which grains to sow.

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