When an ignorant farmer with a toothache seeks out the help of Paul Revere, he accidentally starts the American Revolution.

When a Soviet state official attempts to coerce a celebrated poet into apologizing for a political joke he made, the official gets a taste of his own predatory medicine at the hand of the poet's vengeful wife.

Protagonist Leo Gold attends the annual Anarchists’ Convention in New York City, a spectacle predictably filled with divisions and subcommittees and impassioned debates over topics as banal as the order of events and whether dinner should be self-serve. But when the hotel manager asks the party to vacate the room as previously booked, the group unites to build barricades and sing protest songs to defend their noble cause.

Cutthroat department politics leave a young English professor in danger of losing his job and falling into obscurity. To save himself, he seizes on a playful lie that soon spirals far out of his control.

In 1960s Boston, a Jewish deli owner who struggles to come up with his newest joke stumbles into a scam with more ramifications than he could have ever dreamed possible.

In France, an extremely wealthy man who owns a porcelain collection is invited to lunch by an odd-ball art dealer who has an elderly, eccentric socialite friend that collects porcelain de sax.

A diverse array of passengers and crew aboard a 777 commercial airplane are on their way to Boston when the pilot informs everyone of a presumable military attack in Guam.

In World War I era Britain, an Oxford University dean tells his colleague about the arm of war that stretched to his small English town and changed the life of the community stonemason. When the stonemason shares his idea for bringing down German planes, he doesn't expect to be so devastated by the death he causes.

The characters found in jokes are forced to act out the jokes every time they are told.

An American woman and man visiting France criticize the French people and culture, revealing their ignorance and disregard even as they delight in the fun their unusual group of friends is having.