Emily Levine (October 20, 1944 – February 3, 2019) was an American humorist, writer, actress and public speaker who lectured on science and the human condition.
"[3] Levine channelled her acting potential into a late night improvisation group known as The New York City Stickball Team.
"[3] The New York City Stickball Team disbanded soon after it began, however Levine found an innate pleasure in performing comedy, and decided to continue honing her comedic skills.
[5] "She 'raps' about all aspects of human dynamics—like being somebody, money, or lack of it, power, violence, love ... Emily refers to her presentation as an 'obscene overture,' but actually her slightly censorable innuendoes are balanced perfectly by her soft-peddled, hard hitting facts of life.
"Once, in the mid 1970's at New York's Improvisation, Emily Levine found her time slot threatened when a stripper in the audience stood and began to perform impromptu, inspiring another woman, a rank amateur at stripping, to join her on stage.
Levine began to write and produce a number of Emmy-award winning commercial satire segments for WNET's "Fifty-First State".
WNBC's News Center 4 (based in New York City) admired her unique style of humor and realism—so much so, that they hired Levine as a weekly feature to provide consumer information.
[8] In the 1980s, Levine became a television writer and producer, working on shows such as Designing Women, Love & War and Dangerous Minds.
[3] She also has created several one-woman shows: It's Not You, It's the Universe: How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too and Lose Weight and How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market.
Using her clever, intellectually relevant humor, Levine created and produced pilots for new situation comedies for CBS, NBC, ABC and HBO.
[12] In the mid 1990s, Levine began to experience a strange array of symptoms including mental fog, osteoarthritis, and a curious lack of interest in activities that she used to enjoy.
[14] "After working in improv, stand-up, and sitcoms, she discovered quantum entanglement and chaos dynamics and somehow found a way to build comedy acts around science—and offer them, loaded with advice and social commentary, to corporate audiences.
Levine spoke at an environmental awards conference in 2013 sponsored by Elbaz Family Foundation, Rolling Stone magazine, and One PacificCoast Bank, and others.
[18] In order to create the authentically scientific content of her show, Levine worked with "EST science advisor and physicist Gabriel Cwilich".
[19] The show description promised to "take you on an explosive, thought-provoking and hilarious ride through several paradigm shifts: from Newton's rational universe through quantum physics, chaos and complexity theory.
In her 2018 TED talk, "How I Made Friends With Reality", Levine expressed her feelings towards her recent diagnosis of Stage IV lung cancer, and the inevitability of her own death.
[20] Levine was confined to her bed for less than a week, she didn't experience pain, she was able to communicate her wishes and continue being her hilarious, quick-witted, grateful self.