Radiolab - Science Vs: The Funniest Joke in the World

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

When he rounded them up, he had a 100.A few months ago, Wendy Zuckerman invited our own Latif Nasser to come on her show, and, of course, he jumped at the chance. Laughter ensued, as they set off to find the "The Funniest Joke in the World." When you just Google something like that, the internet might serve you, "What has many keys but can't open a single lock??” (Answer: A piano). So they had to dig deeper. According to science. And for this quest they interviewed a bunch of amazing comics including Tig Notaro, Adam Conover, Dr Jason Leong, Loni Love, and, of course, some scientists: Neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman. Which Joke Will Win???Special thanks to Wendy Zuckerman and the entire team over at Science VsWe have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Vote on your favorites soon, check here for details: https://radiolab.org/moonSupport Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.Signup for our newsletter. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, I'm Lettif Nasser. This is Radiolab. A few months back, I got an email from the ever effervescent Wendy Zuckerman, who hosts the podcast Science Versus. Some of you might know it. And she invited me on her show. Now, if you don't know the show, every episode they take a subject could be,

I don't know, like intermittent fasting or menopause, or I think they did one on ghosts. They'll just pick a topic and then they'll dig up all the science they can find on it and they'll kind of go over it and they'll poke and prod it. How do we know what we know? What are a bunch of myths about this topic that we can bust? And then just in general,

they try to make some sort of deeper sense of the thing. So you know whether to do it or not to do it or to avoid it or to be scared of it or not be scared of it or whatever. Like it helps you live your life. That's kind of the end. So anyway, when Wendy invited me, I was like, of course I'm going to come on your show. She told me very little of what we were going to do in advance. And so I just kind of showed up and I had a blast. It was strange and fun and funny. And I was like, OK, I want to share this

with all the Radiolabbers too. So here it is, an episode of Science Verses featuring yours truly. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Verses. ["Science Verses Theme"] Today on the show, we're pitting facts against funnies. ["Science Verses Theme"]

where pitting facts against funnies. Today, we are going on a ridiculous journey together. Today, it's a quest. It's like we're going to be heroes on this epic adventure. And at times things might get a little rude, a little naughty, just in case this kid's listening. But before we go any further, like all heroes' journeys, we're gonna need a companion. You know, like Robin to Batman,

Samwise Gamgee to Frodo Baggins, Buzz to Woody. And our companion today is a man who has gone on a great many scientific quests. He's traveled the world, put one foot in front of the other. I give you co-host of Radiolab, Latif Nasser. Hello! Hi, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be the, uh, the Broto to your Batman or whatever is the...

I'm honored to be here. So do you want to know our mission? Yeah. Okay. We're going to find to know our mission? Yeah. Okay. We're going to find the funniest joke in the world. Wow. That sounds dangerous. Wow.

I know. It sounds dangerous. It sounds big, but I'm going to keep it safe. I'm going to keep it safe. Okay. And you might be thinking, why? Why are we doing this? So I wanted to tell you the origin story to this hero's journey.

Okay, right. And it doesn't get much bigger than this. So the other day, I was feeling a little bit sad. I wanted a little pick me up. So I went to Google, the world's funniest joke. Right. And you know what I got? What? It was trash. It was absolute trash. Sure. Like, you know, did you hear about the rancher who had 97 cows in his field? When he rounded

them up, he had 100. Oh, that was not even... That's real bad. Yeah. That's solemn. Like, you could tell that at a funeral. I was like, this is making me feel worse. So I kept trying different search terms and then I got crap like this. What has many keys but can't open a single lock? What has many keys but can't open a single lock? A piano. Yeah. I mean, that to me, that's not a joke.

That's like a riddle. Or like, it makes sense. That's a riddle. It like belongs in Lord of the Rings, right? Like, it's like, that's not... It's not a joke. That's like a riddle or like it makes sense. That's a riddle. It like belongs in Lord of the Rings, right? Like it's like that's not. It's not a joke. It's not a joke. It's not even close to a joke. And so I just thought we could do better, you know,

using research and rigor. You and me, we could do better. We could find the best joke in the world. You know, there are other things that could cheer you up. Like, I mean, sugar, antidepressants, a hug. That's true. There's like a lot of other things that you could do. But just not to...

I'm not judging your life or anything. No, no. That's... You think Googling the funniest joke probably wasn't like a long-term solution to my problems. Not a long-term solution to your problems. Yeah, that's basically where I'm coming from. But I thought- You thought it was.

It couldn't hurt. Okay, so to start us off, I wanted to know if it was even possible to find the funniest joke in the world. Yes, right. So I asked a bunch of comedians this very question. Okay, great. So here are their answers. So this is what US comedian Ting Notaro. Brilliant comedian.

Yes, said, she was not optimistic. Do you think we can find this joke? Yes. Sure. Over and over and over again, because it's going to be different opinions. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And Takashi Wakasugi, who's from Japan, agreed with Tig saying, you know, comedy is subjective, people have different opinions, that's why being a comic is so hard.

And he said, you know, in many ways telling a joke, it's like having sex. We wanna make you feel better. We do always do our best. Right. But sometimes we don't know what you want, what you like. And some people make noise if you like it. And some people don't make noise even though if they enjoy it. Yeah, this is hard. This is hard.

Yeah, it's hard, right? And then so I asked my very good friend who's an award-winning comic in Australia, Penny Greenhalgh, and I just like really thought I'd get a supportive answer here. Do you think I can do it? No, no. Penny! I don't know. I think I reckon you'll try your hardest.

Let's try again. Let's try again. That was good. So I'm good at second take. Okay, so do you think I can do it? Wendy, I'm your friend and as your friend, I'm going to be honest with you. Yeah. I don't think you will.

Mmm, with friends like that? Yeah. Latif, I could see your face dropping. Yeah. You know, but I just want you to know that some comics were on team Batman and Frodo, team Wendy and Latif. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, here's what Malaysian comic Dr. Jason Leong said.

Uh-huh, huh. Okay. Wow. I suppose technically it's possible. I suppose technically it's possible. That's a ringing endorsement. He even had a strategy for us. He said, get a few jokes, get a big enough sample size voting system going across the world. Thought we could do it. Emmy award winner, Loni Love, in fact had so much optimism for us that she even gave us our first clue. It's just something simple that people usually laugh at. And it's right there in front of your face, you know?

It's right there. And it's something that everybody can laugh at it. It's funny because, like, to the critique of the premise was, this is too complicated, right? Yes. And then this solution for the quest, like, is just go simple. Go simple. Which I think is right. Yeah, I think that's right. Because, like, even if there's no such thing as the perfect joke,

there is somewhere the joke that more of the eight billion people on planet Earth will laugh at than any other joke. Do you know what I mean? I think so. I think so. I think it, yeah, that's right. Even if everyone in the world doesn't find it funny, it's still helping lots of people. Yeah, yeah.

Put a smile on their face. Yes, yes. There must be something. There's gotta be. Okay, with this enthusiasm, with this mindset, our hunt for the funniest joke in the world begins. Yeah. And it's coming up just after this break. LATIF here with Wendy Zuckerman presenting Science Versus.

Welcome back. Today on the show, our biggest challenge yet to find the funniest joke in the world. We're here with Latif Nasser. How are you feeling about our chances at this point? You know, not, I wouldn't bet for us, but I wouldn't bet against us. That is very ambiguous. That's great. Do you have a joke to enter into our funniest joke competition? It's okay.

So this is the thing that my, my two-old said. This is like a few months ago, and it alternately makes me laugh and like kind of like horrifies me. Okay, so one day I was going out. He was sitting, he was playing like just by the door. And I was going out and I was like, okay, bud, like, I'm going to take out the garbage. And he goes, why don't you take your face? That was it. He like completely roasted me. Like, no, nothing, nothing before it. Nothing that... Like, he just came out of nowhere.

Why don't you take your face? With the garbage, because your face is garbage is what he's saying to me. My son, my own son, my own flesh and blood. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Take your face. Our first entry into the world's funniest joke competition. Okay.

But now we have our first scientific guest here and she is going to set the stakes to tell us how important our quest is, our quest to find the funniest joke in the world. So meet Sophie Scott. I'm a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. This fancy person, as part of her work, researches laughter. And she told me that there is a gaggle or giggle of research out there that shows why laughing matters. So what's curious is that we as humans, we're not the only animals to laugh. Rats do a kind of playful vocalization. That is if you tickle them just right. What you need to do to tickle a rat is you need to tickle them on the nape of the neck.

That's why they're really ticklish. So just sort of between the shoulder blades. Primates, like chimps, do a laugh. Mm. Chimpanzees laugh. It sounds very like our laughter. It's like a kind of hee hee hee hee hee hee sound. This is an actual chim- laughing. Hee hee hee hee hee spot on. But even though there are other creatures out there that do a kind of laugh, there are things that are very special about our human laughter.

And one of them is this. Humans laugh loud. We laugh to be heard. We broadcast our laughter. What a weird sort of obnoxious thing. What a weird sort of obnoxious thing. Like, for us humans, like, we're the loud laughers of the animal kingdom. Like, what a weird thing. I'm desperately trying to laugh quietly right now.

It's funny. But like, imagine like on Noah's Ark or whatever, it's like, we're the ones laughing and everyone else is like, oh, God, like, we get it. Like you're having fun. We're all having fun just going... That's right. Right. We're just doing it breathy and over here and to ourselves. And you just like really are rubbing it in.

Yes. Yes. But that is, I mean, that is exactly what we think the evolutionary purpose of this is, is to like show that we are laughing and possibly to get others laughing too, to bring joy because we're the only animals as far as science knows that have contagious laughter. So if I start laughing, you're more likely to start laughing. We're way more likely to laugh when other people are around versus when we're alone. And Sophie has found that when it comes to jokes, the power of laughter is so strong that it can turn a terrible joke into a funnier joke.

So she actually did this study where she got some jokes. We took real stinkers like, what's the best day for cooking? Friday? Oh, yeah. So she got these terrible, these stinkers as she puts it, these terrible jokes, and she found that just by adding a laugh, people would rate these stinkers as funnier. And for Sophie, this like all shows that laughter is playing this like really important role in connecting people.

So there really is something very basic about the ability of laughter perhaps to jump the gaps between humans. As if if we could find a joke to get the whole world laughing, I mean, we'd be Nobel Prize winners. Or at least like, Ig Nobel Prize winners. Yes. Okay, so with that in mind, with the stakes truly set for this quest, now we've just got to find this joke.

But where to start? Where to start? I kept pottering around on the internet, even though that did not give me the funniest joke. But it did bring me to this fella, Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the university at Hertfordshire in the UK. Notoriously funny university. It's very well known.

And it's Shire! Shire for our quest. Oh, that's right. Okay, great. Okay, I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. So in the early 2000s, Richard was asked to come up with this big science public project. It was for a fancy British science association, and he cannot think of anything. But as he's walking through the doors of the meeting...

This idea just popped into my head, which was the search for the world's funniest joke. Twinsies! Twinsies. And that was my pitch. I simply sat down and said, we're going to search the world's funniest joke. And they went, that's a great idea. Let's do that. Which I didn't expect them to say, to be honest.

This is, well, this is quite funny because... So I explained our situation. Our situation, of course. I pitched my editor that we're going to find the world's funniest joke and I didn't know how to do this. Well, this is quite funny because... So I explained our situation. Our situation, of course. I pitched my editor that we're going to find the world's funniest joke, and I didn't know how to do this. I mean, now all we have, I guess, is some crappy joke about pianos and keys. You know, but that's not funny.

No, that's not the funniest joke in the world. Wouldn't it be sad if that was the funniest joke in the world? If everyone went, oh, my God, it's the piano joke. We love that. Exactly. So exactly. Well, the experience that you had pitching to your editor was the one that I had all those years ago.

Yes. So I go back to the team at the University of Hertfordshire. I say, we're going to find the world's funniest joke. And they went, great. How are we going to do that? And I said, I've got no idea. I didn't get that far in the pitch. We've got nothing basically.

Okay. Very relatable. I like this guy a lot, although I have no idea what he's going to do next. Okay, well then they come up with a plan, a radical plan. Radical for the 2000s. We decided people would come onto the internet, the newly formed internet, they would type in their favourite joke and submit it, and they would rate the joke submitted by others. And nowadays you go, well, of course you could do that. You could do it with people all over the world.

But back then there wasn't a way of collecting data via the web. Right, so Richard's team actually has to develop a website from scratch that could do all this where people could come online, submit jokes, or they'd be given different jokes and then they would rate how funny they are. So they get this website done, and now they just need to get some publicity.

Because this whole experiment is hinging on lots of people going onto the website, like a big enough sample size to submit jokes and rate them. But it turns out getting publicity was not a problem. Because once news outlets around the world found out about this competition, they lapped it up. And it goes viral. It goes all over the world that scientists are searching for the world's funniest joke. What makes one person laugh could make the next person cringe. The search is now on to find the world's funniest joke.

There was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of pressure. My goodness, gonna find the world's funniest joke. There was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of pressure. My goodness, going to find the world's funniest joke. And so people rated the jokes on a gigolo meter. Yeah. We refer to it as a gigolo meter. A gigolo meter. Gigolo meter.

Gigolo meter. And it was very scientific. It had five ratings on it from not very funny, which would be the piano joke, would be not very funny, through to moderately funny, and then onto absolutely hilarious. Okay, so the ranking is one to five. Okay. Totally working, people are coming onto the site,

in droves, at that very early on, people start putting dirty jokes onto the website, of course, but then Richard's like- And you have to be okay with that, no? You're not? No, so in this experiment, they actually removed the dirty jokes because this was a big family experiment, unlike Science Versus. Okay. Oh, got it. So you're doing all the way, all the jokes. We could do all the... Yeah. But Richard removes the rude jokes.

Okay. But then, as the competition is trucking along, Yeah. one day Richard checks in with the team, and he sees this joke that would send him, and now us, on a rather interesting path. Mm-hmm.

Almost like the endless stairs to cross into Mordor. Okay. Okay, so here's the joke. Two cows in a field, one turns to the other and says, Moo, and the other one says, I was going to say that. Not bad. Not bad.

Old, old joke. Old, old joke. That's probably a two or a three on the gigalometer. Yeah, yeah, I would agree that's a two or a three. So clearly that's not going to be the winner of either Richard's competition or ours, but it did make Richard think, wait a sec, could we do an experiment within an experiment? So Richard wonders, like, what if we tried out different versions of this cow joke by switching up the animals?

And could this tell us something deeper about why one joke is funny and one joke isn't? Oh, yeah. So you could have two lions, one turns the other in roars, and the other says, I was going to say that. Less funny. That's less funny. Interesting. Interesting. OK, OK. So other says, I was gonna say that. Less funny, that's less funny. Interesting, interesting. Okay, okay, so other ones, they tried two birds going,

cheep cheep, two ducks, one says quack, then there's two dogs, woof woof, I was gonna say that. No, that's not funny. No, maybe that's funny, maybe that's funny, but not because of the noise, but because dogs are so relatable. Mm, okay. So, so Richard puts a bunch of these jokes into the database when people come on,

they might be randomly given one of those jokes. So which, which do you think is the funniest? Quack, quack. Yes. It was? That was the winner. Damn. Okay.

Two ducks. One says quack and the other one, I was going to say that. So the big question is why is duck quacking so funny? Okay. And why? And it turned out that ducks and quack are funny words. Yeah. And so what is it about duck and quack? Why are they funny? And the answer lies in this fabulously named paper,

Wiggly, Squiffy, Lummocks and Boobs. What makes some words funny? Nice. And here's what they did. They used this survey data where hundreds of people had been asked to rate the funniness of thousands of English words. And they used basically the equivalent of the gigalometer. So you want to play?

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Juju? Juju is funny. Yeah. Juju. Chauffeur? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Juju? Juju is funny. Yeah. Juju. Chauffeur?

Chauffeur. Chauffeur. Not funny. Orgy? Orgy. Not funny. Holder? Holder?

Holder. Not funny. Holder is the least funny word you've said. I don't know why that makes me laugh so much. It's such a dumb thing to ask. No, because holder is so functional. Yeah, yeah, it is. And you know, you basically picked the right order. So of the words I gave you, juju was ranked as the highest, the funniest word, then orgy, which in this

study it was actually considered pretty funny. Chauffeur came after that and holder not funny at all. Okay. So the researchers then poured over this dataset to create an algorithm for funny words that they then applied to more than 45,000 English words. And I actually have the Excel spreadsheet right here if you want to throw out any words. Oh wow. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm almost more curious, what are the words at the very bottom of the list? Okay, very interestingly, the least funny word according to this study is harassment.

Harassment. That makes me want to make a joke where the punchline is harassment. I know, right? So the researchers really swam in that data to try and see patterns as to what is funny and what is not. And one thing that really came up is that certain sounds are funny, like K. Anything with a hard K, so clown and duck and quack. Duck and quack, both of them have a K! Right? And it's funny because this comedy K, so there's an episode of The Simpsons about it,

like comedians know about this, there's a 30 Rock has a joke about it. Oh really? Last year, Jenna accused me of trying to destroy her because her lines didn't have any K sounds, which she thinks is the funniest sound. Oh my god, my cousin Carl crashed his car and now he's in a coma at the Kindle Clinic.

That was good. Now as far as I could tell, no one has repeated this experiment in a non-English language. And because we're looking for the funniest joke in the world, I wanted to ask comics about this in other languages. So we're kind of stuck with anecdotes, unfortunately. But I asked Egyptian comic, Mohamed Magdi, what is a funny word in Arabic? And this is what he said. I think the word for shell,

like the shell that you find on the beach is quite funny. It's called Kauka. Kauka? Yeah, yeah. So if you just- Two K's. Yeah, two K's. There you go.

Actually, you're right. Oh my God. Science does work. What? Oh my god, science does work! What? So other sounds in English that are funny are oo sound, so like booby whoop. Yeah, sure. As well as words ending in Y and L, so like giggle and waddle are also funny.

Yeah. As a general rule, letters and sounds that aren't very common tend to rate as funny. So curt sound is pretty rare. And also like if you have this like weird collection of sounds in a word, that tends to be funny. So I talked about this with comedian Tig Notaro. So we're talking about funny words and she said, a co-host on her podcast, Handsome, said this one day.

Bulbous frog. And I couldn't move on. I said, I'm sorry, we have to go back. What do you mean a bulbous frog? Also the delivery of this word, it kept, like, yes, and the bulbous frog and it was so bulbous and I was like, stop saying that word! Like, it made me sick to my stomach, but I also recognized it as a funny word.

Yes, and according to the Wrigley Squiffy paper, bulbous does rank pretty high. Oh, right. Huh, yeah. So I kept looking for clues in other languages as to what words might be funny. So smart. So smart. So I talked to Indian comic Ruj Ashfaq about this. She won the Best Newcomer at Edinburgh last year. She speaks Hindi. She's performed all over India. And she told me that there are a few words that often get a laugh.

There's this word called Chinchpokli, which is, yeah. That's very funny. It's really funny. It's a chinchpokli. Chinchpokli. It's a place. It's a place. Chinchpokli.

Chinchpokli. And every time someone says it. He does have a K, right? Chinchpokli. Yes, you're right. But that's not why it's funny, right? I don't, maybe it's the chinch. Yes.

It's so thin and then the pokli is so wide. And you're like, why, why'd you put that together? Change porkly. Change porkly. Change porkly. Change porkly, right? Oh, so good.

Satisfying. It's a neighbourhood in Mumbai. Now what makes words funny isn't just their sounds, it's also their meanings. So in English, the study found that rude words, words about body parts and bodily functions, insult words also rate as funny. Right. So this thing with insulting words being funny, it seems to track in India too. So Ruj told me about one more and we're about to get a little bit rude here.

Great. Is oo funny in India? Oo is funny. I think OO is funny. Goo, oh my god, the word goo is so funny and goo basically means shit. And so the each shit in Hindi is goo ka. And that usually gets a love. So after the break, we're gonna to hear the winner of Richard's experiment and will we find the funniest joke in the world?

Who knows? Who knows? Could go either way. Could go either way here. We're back on our grand quest to find the funniest joke in the world. I'm your dungeon master and my paladin is Latif Nasser. Hello. Hi.

So as we're on this journey for the funniest joke in the world, one potential hiccup in our plan is if different countries and cultures have vastly different senses of humor. And this is something you hear talked about, like even when I was living in New York, people would like to talk about how Australians have such a different sense of humor to Americans. And so I looked into the research on this. Right. And one big study published a few years ago that had done surveys on 28 countries, you know, thousands

and thousands of people. And they did find like people from Indonesia and Japan tended to use self-disparaging humour, so making fun of themselves, while Russia and Estonia scored high on aggressive humour that might involve belittling or teasing others. Mm. So there are some differences, but the thing is, for all these, like, gulfs that scientific papers like to highlight, the research paper ultimately concluded that there are, quote, more similarities than differences across the countries. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that.

I believe that. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. And some of the comedians that I spoke to about, you know, finding the funniest joke in the world said that as long as we make sure our joke isn't... it doesn't have like very specific cultural references in it, like talking about the politics of a specific country or town or whatever. Yeah. Like talking about the politics of a specific country or town or whatever. As long as we stick to universal themes, sex, bodily fluids, family dynamics, we're going to up our chances of finding this joke. Which is why bodies are so, yeah, bodies work.

Bodies, animals. Yeah, I like that. I like that. So now let's fast forward to the end of Richard Wiseman's experiment. A year has passed. He's gotten 40,000 jokes, hundreds of thousands of ratings from 70 countries. And Richard told me that by the end of the experiment, it was really clear that this competition was over. You could see the same jokes coming in again and again. If I read, um, what's

brown and sticky? A stick. If I read that one more time, every morning, three or four people to put that in. How is it? Did it write well? No, no, no, no. It was always down there with pianos. It was never did well. And funnily enough, 20 years later, we did a call out on social media and this brown and sticky joke came up over and over again. Wow. Okay, so Latif, are you ready to hear the winner of Richard's competition? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Do you want to do a little drum roll, by the way?

Oh, sure. I just feel like... Bing! Oh, by the way, I just feel like... Bing! There are two hunters out in the woods. One of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are glazed. His friend whips out his phone, calls the emergency services. He says, my friend is dead, what can I do?

The operator says, calm down, I can help. First let's make certain he's dead. There's a silence, then a gunshot, and then the guy's back on the phone. He says, okay down, I can help. First, let's make certain he's dead. There's a silence, then a gunshot, and then the guy's back on the phone, he says, okay, now what? That was good! That was good! I liked it! So I told it to a bunch of Alchimadians... Okay. ...to rather mixed reviews. Okay, okay, okay. Let's hear it.

That's a great joke. Yeah. That's the winner? Really? If you had the A plus funniest joke in the world, F bad joke, what are you rating it? I will give it a passing grade. It passes as a joke. Wow, it passes as a joke. Like that's where it gets, you were aware. It's a joke.

It's a joke. Well done. But try harder. You know what I mean? That last harsh critique is comedian Jason Leong. I was on his side. So when Richard first told me this Hunter joke, this was my reaction. What? How is that the funniest joke in the world?

Oh, wow. Why did you, you didn't mind it? You don't mind it? I didn't mind it. I mean, maybe I'm a cheap laugh. It's kind of wholesome even though it's about death, murder. It's like of wholesome, even though it's about death, murder. It's like a wholesome murder joke, you know? It's funny. I asked Richard what he thought about it. What did you feel, how did you feel

when your colleagues came to you and were like, this is the winner and you read that? What went through your mind? Horror, because I knew I would have to go on radio and television and tell that joke as the world's funniest joke and I knew it wasn't funny And it was just we must have done 50 interviews that that yeah when that came out and each time you saw grind So it's a long joke as well. It's not a short joke. You grind through this joke knowing it's not funny.

Having just told everyone that he found the world's funniest joke, it was living hell. After a while, I just refused to tell it. But what's funny is that like, even though it didn't make me laugh and Richard doesn't really like it, like when you look at the scientific theories of humor, this Hunter joke actually ticks a lot of boxes. Okay, so let's take a look at these scientific theories of humour. Okay, great. One of the biggest theories of humour is that you need a surprise.

So perhaps something incongruous. So here's our comedian Lonnie Love on this. It's something that you didn't expect. That's what makes you laugh because your mind is thinking one way and you go a whole other corner or avenue. That is what makes people laugh. And that's the science of the joke. So Richard gave me an example of this, which I actually quite like as a joke.

Okay. Two fish in a tank. One turns to the other and says, do you know how to drive this? Love it. Love it. So we have fish in a tank. We think it's a fish tank. And then we find out there in an army tank that's in Congress.

It surprises us. We laugh. So one paper called this conceptual bifurcation, which is that moment where you realize that something that you thought belonged to just one category, a tank is something that only a fish would hang out in, actually belongs to two categories and army tank too, ha ha. And so the hunter joke obviously has this as well, the moment you realize first let's make certain he's dead actually has two meanings and then it's a funny surprise. Right.

That was a funny surprise. Right. That was a funny joke. Yeah. Also, conceptual bifurcation, I feel like both of those words would rank very low on your spreadsheet. Yeah. That's like a very unfunny, that's like the unfunniest phrase you could find to describe a joke. Yeah.

It's like barely above harassment. Right. Yeah, joke. Yeah. It's like barely above harassment. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Completely. Studies have actually put people into brain scanners and presented them with jokes and found that certain areas associated with language get really, really excited when we hear these kinds of jokes, which makes a lot of sense

because there's a lot of brain work involved in putting these two concepts together for that beautiful aha moment. Right, right. Adam Conover of most famously Adam Ruins Everything, he's also a stand up. And he says that the surprise can come in different forms. So it doesn't have to be that you were expecting a joke to go in one direction and then it goes somewhere else. It could be that someone explains something in a way that you never thought of before.

My own personal theory that I use to write jokes is that something is funny when a truth is combined with a surprise, when people have a shock of recognition that they did not expect. So, you know, the very classic joke is, you know, a piece of observational comedy, you know, have you ever noticed that airplane food is X,

whatever it is, right? And if you have in fact noticed that, but no one has ever said that to you before, then you will likely laugh, right? But surprise can't explain everything about comedy because things can be surprising and not funny at all. And on the flip side, researchers found that even when there is no surprise,

like in some studies, people have been told a joke before, or even if they're asked like, can you predict the punchline of this joke, people still find it funny and sometimes even funnier. And I told Tig Notaro, the Hunter joke, it was kind of funny because this was her reaction. Saw it coming. Still found it amusing. Oh, yeah.

So if there's more to a zinger than surprise, what else have we got? Superiority theory. So here's Richard on that. A laugh is a kind of cry of superiority. You made somebody else look silly or put them down and that you're going, yes, I'm better than them. That's so depressing actually. That's like a very depressing.

It is a very depressing form. And it does explain some jokes because like in, in so many cultures, there are these jokes about what some researchers call like the fool towns or fool places. Like, so in Australia, if you start a joke with like two Tasmanians walking to a bar. Got it. In Canada, it's Newfoundlanders. Yeah, right. So in the UK, maybe they make fun of the Irish.

In Ireland, maybe they make fun of the Kerrymen. In France, the Belgians. And it goes beyond time. So I was reading about this paper that said in ancient Greece, it was Abdera, the town of Abdera, you know, the two Abderans. Abdera. And when it comes to the hunter joke, you could argue we feel superior to the stupid hunter.

It just does make us feel so petty. Like we're just like so petty and insecure. Like we need something to feel bigger than. Yeah, I really don't think that's why I'm laughing at a lot of jokes. And it has been criticized a little bit recently. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not petty and insecure. But I like to think there's more to it than that. So then this last scientific theory of humor I want to walk through just quickly is that a lot of humor is triggered by these potentially threatening or bad situations and then we

laugh to release tension. So the hunter joke ticks that off. Yeah, it's like, oh, there's a little bubble of tension here. Pop it. Like, okay, great. We're good. We're good, right? Yes. And even though there's not a lot of studies testing this theory of humor,

Richard said that just from reading like thousands of jokes in his experiment, it seemed to sort of be at the heart of why a lot of them were funny. It's not chance that a lot of jokes involve people experiencing stuff that makes us worried. Yeah. Right. And then as like, as an interesting tidbit, more recently, researchers have kind of added

to this saying that you can't just have tension or what they call a violation. They say you ultimately need to feel safe. So the violation in a joke has to be benign. It's called the benign violation theory. And if you think of like a classic funniest home video show where someone falls on their face, that's like a violation. It's a bit dangerous, but then it's safe. Like the person got up, was fine, and like for some reason

sent their snafu to like a 90s TV channel. Right. But if they didn't get up and they just like, were dead. Yeah, right. That's not funny. We're not laughing at that anymore. So to go back to like the Hunter joke just for a second. Right.

Even though it ticks these scientific boxes, like we talked about, it's not funny. And so I thought, or to me, I don't know, it can't be the funniest. It can't be the funniest. It's not the funniest. It's not the funniest. And so I asked Richard, like his experiment, you know, he did the right thing. They got the sample size.

They asked people, you know, many countries around the world, like, so what went wrong? And here's what he said. It was the joke that most people didn't hate. So you can look at any one group, you can look at men or women or young or old or Canadians. And there's always a joke that they thought was much, much funnier. But when you pulled the data, you got the average. And that's the average is the average joke is the kind of like, yes, right? I think I think what I've learnt from talking to you...

Nothing. You've learnt nothing. ...is that, yes, where you went wrong was asking thousands and thousands of people for their opinion. Where we went wrong was starting. That little downhill from there. A little downhill from there. Alright, so, Ladi, from all of the jokes that you've heard today, have we found your favourite? I'm very happy with...

Take Your Face. I still think think that one is pretty good. I'm going to take out the garbage. Take your face. The answer was hiding within us all along. Yeah. We found your joke. We fulfilled our quest. Yeah.

Um, thank you very much. Thank you. For coming on the show. Thank you. I feel lighter. Um... LAUGHS This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Joel Werner,

Rose Rimler and Meryl Horne. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Sarah Bourne. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, So Wiley and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr. Andrew Farkas, Professor Penny MacDonald, Dr. Maggie Pranger and a huge thank you to Professor Chris Westbury for sharing your amazing spreadsheet of the funniest words.

Another big thanks to Lindsay Farber, Roland Kevoss, Lauren Lodew-Duchet, Andrea Jones-Roy and the other comics that we spoke to at the Joke Lab and in fact all of the comics that we spoke to and couldn't fit into this episode. We really, really appreciate you and your time. Thanks to Ben Milam, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Stupid Old Studios, Paige Ransbury, the Zuckerman family, and Joseph LaValle Wilson. On the Radiolab side, we just want to say a big thank you to Wendy Zuckerman and everyone at the Science Vs Team, including former Radi labber, Akeddie Foster-Keys. Thank you for having me on.

Thank you for letting us share this episode. We will be back next week. And until then, my friends, I wish you luck finding ways to keep laughing. ["Science Vs. Team Theme"] Have a good week. Hi, I'm David and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanam Sambandhan, Mac Keelty, Annie McEwan, Rebecca Lacks, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandback, Ariane Whack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, I'm Erica Iñonkers. Leadership's report for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.