SoylentNews

That's the main thing that can be learned from comedians, yes. They don't have the luxury of being long-winded and getting sidetracked by minutiae. They have to speak so as to be easily understood by 95% of their audience and convey their meaning extremely efficiently or the joke dies. That academics specifically and intellectuals in general are largely unable to do this is why most people have little to no interest in listening to them [youtube.com].

You're comparing apples to oranges. Playing on emotions as a comedian does is a much different form of communication than conveying knowledge and information.

Making someone laugh, cry or get angry requires significantly different skills and strategies from expositing complex sets of ideas like quantum mechanics, demand curves or game theory.

Louis CK would crash and burn trying to explain cell regulation through potassium channels. However, a biologist would likely be able to do so fairly well, even if he or she ended up pelted with rotten fruit at a comedy club's open mike night.

That's not to say that academics are all wonderful communicators of ideas, especially in verbal contexts. However, many do communicate well verbally.