Stuff You Should Know - Is there a scientific formula for funny?

Episode Date: November 26, 2013

Recorded live at the Los Angeles PodFest, this episode of SYSK delves into the longstanding attempt to break down what humans find funny into a scientifically reproducible formula. Join Josh and Chuck as they examine just why this extremely unfunny quest will (thankfully) never be realized. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and do not include pending transactions or any other purchases you make before the end of the billing period. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Stuff You Should Know! Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And with us as not always is all of you guys here at LA Podcast Fest. It's a little unusual. We've only done this a couple of times before.

Yeah, a little South by Southwest. Yeah, Comic Con. A little Comic Con. Yeah. And now Podcast Fest. That's right. And we've got a pretty good crew here, good group. I can tell just by the looks of you guys.

And we've got a very special treat for all of you listeners at home. We're all very excited about it. I think I'm the most excited about it though, aren't I? You're definitely the most excited about it. And today we're talking about, Chuck, as you were saying, we're going to answer a question. Is there a scientific formula for funny? And I guess we can kind of spoil it now by saying yes and not really. Right.

And that was it. That's all. That's the podcast. Thank you. I do have an intro if you're interested in hearing it. Remember our Ghosts episode? Yeah. That was pretty bad.

So I liked it. We got a lot of crud from skeptics. Surprise. They didn't like our Ghost episode. But there was a guy, a researcher named Richard Wiseman from Hertfordshire University in the UK. Go figgy puddings. And Richard, do you remember who I'm talking about? I remember the guy.

We interpreted his research into Ghosts, which is basically used to debunk Ghosts. We took what he found as evidence that there may be such things as Ghosts. And the skeptics didn't like that at all. But he's done some other stuff too. So he makes an appearance in this podcast as of right now. Before he was doing Ghost stuff, he was doing humor research. Back in 2002, he set up a website called Laugh Lab. And he wanted to find the world's funniest joke.

Really? Yeah. Not to be confused with the funniest joke in the world, the Monty Python thing. This is different. And there were 40,000 submissions. I think 1.4 million hits. And this is prior to social media. So these are pretty respectable numbers if you think about it.

They found the world's funniest joke. I generally don't know this, so I'm on pins and needles. Do you want to hear it? Yeah. Okay. So this guy is out hunting with a friend of his in the woods. And the friend suddenly just drops over, falls to the ground. And the hunter picks up a cell phone and he calls 911.

And he says, hey, I think my friend just died. We're out here in the woods hunting. What should I do? And the 911 operator says, well, first let's make sure he's dead. And so the hunter shoots his friend. And he goes, okay, now what? It's the world's funniest joke. It's not mine.

Was that okay? I thought it was yours. Not mine. So it had a mixed reaction. And what we're talking about now is the world's funniest joke. And it got a couple of laughs here, right? Yeah. I think what that proves in the point of this long rambling intro is that we pretty

much can't predict what's funny, what people are going to find funny. And let's talk about exactly why that is, Chuckers. Yes. Well, it's subjective, but we'll get to that later. Right. Well, we can just throw our opinions out then and be right. Well, they've been, even though there is no formula as of yet, it doesn't mean people haven't tried to find out, dating all the way back to the first

masters of comedy, Aristotle and Plato. That's right. Two very funny guys. They talked a lot about it actually, surprisingly. And they basically tried to look at what compels people to laugh. And Aristotle, I think he thought that we were the only creatures to laugh. Is that right? Yeah.

That was just a human phenomenon. Which is wrong. That's right. Because it turns out, and this is the cutest part of the show too, chimpanzees and orangutans and apes not only laugh when you tickle them, but if you go to a baby chimp, you don't even have to make contact, you can just do the little, here I come with the fingers and the baby chimp will laugh. Yeah.

Apparently. And I did look up chimpanzee laughter and it's not like humans make the he-he's and the ho-ho's. There's more of a gasping sound. Apparently rats do the same thing when you tickle them. No, we talked about this in the What's So Funny episode. Remember rat tickling? Yeah.

There's videos of it out there. They make like a little high-pitched thing. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen. Like somebody tickling a rat and the rat is like, oh, it's very cute. So yes, the very least laughter or taking tickling as funny goes across species. Yeah. And we did cover some of this in the show on, did we call it What's So Funny? I think so.

Okay. But laughter is definitely a human thing, aside from the primates and the rats, I think. And it consists of variations of one single basic form. It's vowel-like sounds repeated every 210 milliseconds. And humans can either he-he, like you just did, or a variation of a ho-ho, but you don't mix them apparently. There's never been someone that laughed he-ho, he-ho. Because that would be really weird.

You would be messed up if that's how you laugh. And your facial muscles get going. 15 facial muscles that contract and strain. The zygomatic major muscle, which is your upper lip, is triggered. If it's really good, you might get the tear ducts going. I know we've all been there. And you're going to be gasping, and your respiratory system is struggling, basically, to breathe at that point.

Gasping like a baby chimp. Like a baby chimp. So that's basically what laughter is. Babies, human babies, human babies, start at about three to four months. If they have a sense of humor, I guess. And some researchers have found that we are 30 times more likely to laugh in the company of others than when you're alone. So it's definitely a social thing.

And that is, because I read that first, and I was like, clearly they've never watched Portlandia, or Eastbound and Down, alone on the couch at midnight. But, I mean, that's a good point, because when you're watching it by yourself, like, you may laugh, but you're not necessarily laughing your ass off, I guess, is another way to put it. Yeah, well, I do. Oh, you do? Of course.

But that stat, though, was, that was the caveat, is that's not including TV or any kind of external stimulation. Like, if you're just alone, and you, like, think a funny thought or see a funny thing, you're way less likely to laugh if you're by yourself. Okay. But whether you are in China or Santa Monica, wherever you are, laughter is going to sound very similar, like you were saying. And there is going to be such a thing as humor.

It's not necessarily going to be the same thing in China as it is in Santa Monica that gets laughs. Like, it would just be dead silent right now if we were in Beijing. Are we in Beijing? Sounded like it for a second. But so the point is, humor is universal, but it's constrained by all these different contexts. Like, well, like where you are in not just space, but also time, like what guys like Ben Franklin thought was funny, it just kind of falls flat today, like turkey jokes, apple,

brandy jokes. What's a turkey joke? He had a couple. Okay. They weren't that good. They're not, they don't bear repeating here. But all that put together, gender differences, economic differences, all of these things kind of separate, like what's funny from what's not funny, depending on who you are.

But from Aristotle to Plato as one, wasn't he? Yeah. Very funny guy. Yeah. All the way up to Schopenhauer, another hilarious dude. Yeah. Kierkegaard. Yeah, Freud.

Who, by the way, has a great Twitter feed. Kierkegaard Ashean. Are you guys familiar with it? It's awesome. It's Kierkegaard's philosophical musings. And he was pretty dark. Mashed together with Kim Kardashian's contemporary tweets. Just go check it out.

It's like you will definitely follow it. Not her old-timey tweets? No, her contemporary tweets. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Like, I'll give you one. Okay.

That's all on today. It's worth saying. Hey, I can't wait until you guys smell my new fragrance coming out this spring. It reeks of the misery of modern life. That was just an average one, too. We got more than a hee-hee out of this guy. That's good. Right on.

For me, I've actually blogged about it the other day. Short jokes to me are the best. Brevity is the soul of wit. Or as they said on The Simpsons, brevity is wit. Of course, they had to one-up it. And my hero and many writers' heroes is the great Jack Handy, who is a real person, by the way. A lot of people think that Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy was just some made-up name. Like, there's no one named Jack Handy.

It's written by just one of the SNL writers. He was an SNL writer, and his name is Jack Handy. And he has been sort of obsessed with creating the perfect short joke over his career. The closest he thinks he's ever come, and it's pretty good, I think, is the crows seem to be calling his name Thought to Caw. Not bad. Jack Handy thinks that's the best short joke he's ever written. Jack Handy knows what he's talking about.

So good. And it was in a McSweeney's article that I first read about this from The New York Times. They were talking about The New York Times. That writer thought the best one was, and this one's pretty good, too. I came here in peace seeking gold and slaves. So for me, the great Jack Handy is trying to get a laugh out of the fewest amount of words. I came here in peace seeking gold and slaves, five-syllable setup, five-syllable punchline, beautiful clean, the master for me.

What's funny is actually in my research, I ran across a real formula for funny. That was the yes part of the answer. Alcohol plus joke greater than... So it's x equals f times l plus n times o divided by p. What are those values? Well, p actually penalizes you because that's the number of puns that's in the joke. So you get all these points and then it's divided by the number of puns you use. But one of the formulas that builds up the funniness of a joke

is how long it takes for the punchline to build and then finally pay off. So it's pretty much the opposite of it. So even Jack Handy, and whoever came up with this formula, can't agree on how to make something funnier to figure out what's the funniest. Yeah, well, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it clearly. We've seen a lot of... I know you go to see a lot of stand-up comics. A lot. Yeah, you're really into it.

And through our job, we've gotten to see a lot and it's really fascinating, especially when you meet some of them to see them working this stuff out, especially if you see them more than once doing kind of the same material and the subtle changes. I just think it's really fascinating. And I've been writing a stand-up act for like 10 years. How's it going? It's going pretty good.

Care to do some? No. Not at all. You got a mic, you have an audience? No, no, no, no. Okay. I don't blame you, I wouldn't have either. I would have not even brought it up.

There was a writer named Deborah Solomon for New York Times Magazine, though, that asked Chris Rock, and I'm not going to do my Chris Rock, don't worry. What's funny in his reply was, and it kind of says it all, is you want to know what's funny is thinking about it. What's not funny? Oh, yeah. Chuck, believe that joke. It's not a joke.

Yeah, you want to know what's not funny is thinking about it. Thank you for that. Or talking about it, which is what we're doing. So stop laughing, because it's not funny, apparently. That's right. All right, so we are not the only people who have ever said, can you figure out what's funny scientifically? There's actually a whole study.

It's called humor studies. And strangely enough, it's not taken very seriously among psychologists. Although there's an equal, dedicated amount of work applied to it using the scientific method. You have the International Society for Humor Studies. Really? They've been around since the 80s. They're trying to keep the flame going. And apparently, ever since we started putting people into the wonder machine

and asking them questions or telling them jokes, we've gotten a lot more scientific basis of what's funny. We'll get into that in a little bit. Yeah, that's the fMRI or the MRI machine. We know that. That's our little name for it, though. But prior to this, prior to the wonder machine being rolled out, people have just kind of, it's basically been up to philosophers to figure out what's funny.

And they've come up with some pretty good theories. And there's a big three. I think as many, I saw as many as 100 theories of humor. Oh, really? But then it's been whittled down to a big three pretty much arbitrarily. Or else people are like, maybe these three are the right ones? Who knows? But I think these kind of hit on it.

Number one is the superiority theory. Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, they all sort of focus on this dark side of comedy. And we've all been there laughing at someone else's expense. Sometimes can be quite a good time. It's pretty much like this theory would be supported by Dwight Schrute, like watching him or listening to him. For sure.

And I might have told this on another show, but one of the funniest things I ever saw, bless you, was in college in Athens, Georgia. I saw a guy, Faceplant, really, really bad on campus one day. You're already laughing. Did you laugh? Well, I laughed at this. The dude fell, busted his face forward,

books went spilling out on the sidewalk, and I swear to God, immediately, the guy went like this and opened up a book on the sidewalk, like he was reading. And I was driving and I saw this happen, and I wanted to pull the car over and say, dude, you are the funniest person I've ever seen in my life, because it was just his instinct to play it off like that.

And man, that was like 17 years ago, and it stuck with me in this day. I don't know who that guy was, but I want to meet him still. If you're out there way to go, man. Yeah. But I don't know if I would have laughed at his expense had he not done that, because although the America's Funny Some Video effect,

I'll call it, kicked in the nuts. The juggernaut. That is very much the superiority theory in action. Or it is pretty much the converse theory that says the same thing, but has a kind of a different take of it. It's called inferiority theory. It's like the person, whoever came up with this,

is like the person who raises the last bet by a dollar on the price is right. You know? Oh, oh, superiority theory. How about inferiority theory? What they came up with was that we see in that guy falling, you don't feel better about yourself. You see part of yourself in him.

Like you could have just as easily fallen or whatever. Yeah, but I wouldn't have been cool enough to play it off like I was reading a book. I would have like picked up my books and ran home. Don't laugh at me. Right. So that's where, yeah, that's where the admiration kicks in.

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That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Round number two. We are. We're into relief theory, which is Freud's theory, which means it's wrong. Man, you've had a bone to pick with Freud since I've known you.

I like Freud and Malcolm Gladwell. I like... See? He's like, his eye just started twitching involuntarily. I like Freud as a person. I like what he was trying to do. I just think he was just kind of full of it. All right.

So what did Freud say? He wrote about joking, believe it or not. This is actually his theory that I agree with the most probably. His theory of humor is really theory in that. Yeah, I totally agree. We have, like, it's a buildup of, wait for it, sexual energy that we release. Surprise.

In some way. Bless you. This live podcasting is fun. It adds a whole other sneezing element to it. We're getting out sexual energy, intellectual energy, whatever's pent up through laughter, which makes sense to a certain degree. There are things that you laugh at that you can point to

and say, Freud may have been right here. Yeah, or I think self-deprecation might fall into that a little bit too, like taking the things that make you feel bad, making a joke about it. I've lived my whole life this way, basically. Yeah. Anyone that listens to Howard Stern, he's been joking about his small penis for 25 years.

Who knows if that's true? I think it probably is. But he's definitely made a point of joking about it forever. 25-year joke, man, that means it's definitely true. So that's the relief theory, and I think there's, you know, I put a lot of stock in that for sure. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like adding levity to a situation. Yeah.

And it works, like you can defuse a tense situation by making people laugh, and they may even laugh involuntarily, so relief theory. Yeah. And every, like, every teen movie in history has some dude in it that tries to get out of a fight by making jokes. Right. Which was also me.

Yeah. Although I wasn't even close to getting in fights, so that's not really true. That's because you could talk your way out of them. Early on. Who would want to beat up Chuck? You know? Wouldn't you have to be the meanest guy in the world?

You laugh too much. I think Emily might want to slug at me every now and then. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is the other, the last one on the big three. Yeah. Incongruity theory. Yeah, and this one's really, a really big part of comedy forever through today, forever.

Through today is basically... We normally would have edited that out. But Emmanuel Kant said in his poem, The Critique of Judgment, laughter is an affectation arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. So the modern version of that is incongruity resolution. Basically, you're not getting what you expect. So, like, a punchline takes you by surprise.

Right. Like that classic, how do you keep an elephant from charging? Take away his credit card. Yeah. Again, that wasn't my joke. I'm just giving you examples here. Well, I'm not trying to get the laugh. That's sort of the basis of what some say is the greatest joke,

the aristocrats. Did you guys see that documentary? For those of you who don't know, there's probably like two of you, the idea is that a family goes into a talent agent and says they have a family act. And then the point of the joke is to... nastiest, most blue comedy you can. And it really gets out of hand if you watch this documentary,

which is the point. And at the end, the punchline is, what do you call yourselves? The aristocrats. And it's not so much about the punchline, but that's definitely the incongruity thing. Right, yeah. I think that's probably the basis of humor is it's incongruous. It's an expectation you weren't expecting.

Well, and those are the best jokes to me, is you think you see it coming and you get surprised at the end. Exactly. There's another name for something like that. It's called, and I didn't even know this was a word till today, a para prostokian. Has anyone ever heard that? One person, no?

No. Awesome. I just made it up. That is a figure of speech where the second part causes the audience to rethink the first part. And it has been going on since Aristotle, for instance, he said on his feet he wore blisters. That's one example.

Groucho Marx. I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it. That's the kind of joke. The great Homer Simpson. That was unexpected. If I could just say a few words, I'd be a better public speaker. And Mitch Hedberg, who I know you love, the late great Mitch Hedberg. I haven't slept for 10 days because that would be too long.

That was a good Mitch Hedberg, too. Thanks. I did some heroin before I came in. Right, yeah. Wow, that is not funny. Actually, you know what? We're going to be getting into that. That was a perfect setup.

We're getting into heroin? No. Joking about things that defy what you should be joking about. Yeah, it is. Like someone dying of a heroin overdose. Right. Too soon. That was like 10 years ago.

Thank you, buddy. So you take the big three and you take a little bit of this and you take a little bit of that and you put them together and you can basically explain just about any bit of humor after the fact. That's the key here by, I guess, just mixing them up. Right? So you have, for example, the benign violation theory, which is what you're talking about.

Yeah. Like that's the idea that you have a little bit of incongruity, a little bit of superiority. You mix them together and... You don't want a pun or two? Right. You can come up with a joke that will make people laugh, but there's also a line.

Apparently it's... Apparently I crossed it. Right. With Mitch Hedberg jokes. That's the line. And once you cross that line, then you quickly go from humor to raising the ire of an audience. Right?

Yeah, they say... You should not want to do. Yeah. You should keep a safe psychological distance is what they say, where the humor isn't so real. And the whole too soon thing is totally true. There's a certain amount of time and it's different for everyone and that line is different for everyone.

That's why it's dangerous to be a comic who kind of skirts around those kind of jokes. Yeah, ask Gilbert Godfrey. What did he do? He tweeted a joke about... I don't even remember what it was about the Fukushima earthquake in Tsunami. Too soon. I think too soon it was like,

wow, it was going on, he made a joke about it. And he used to be the Aflac duck and he's not anymore. Which is weird, it raises a point. He lost the Aflac duck game? Yeah, which I imagine paid pretty well. You know he doesn't really talk like that. I know. It's not very well known,

but Howard Stern has him on a telephone message that he played on the show. Yeah. Where he was like, hey Gary, this is Gilbert. And I just wanted to check on the time and I was like, no way. Because he never breaks character. He's famous for always, always, always being that guy. I've never heard him speak otherwise. Yeah, it's pretty weird.

Yeah, I can imagine. And on the too soon thing, I was watching Portlandia with Emily the other night and they have a sketch, I don't know if y'all have seen it about 9-11, where Armisen, they were talking about what you were doing during 9-11 when you got the news and he was like, where was I? Yeah, I heard about this. What was I doing?

And he's like, oh, I was in New York. That's where I was. And he's like, and what happened, 33 planes or something? No, no, no, I know what it was. I know what it was. And I was dying and Emily was like, I don't know. Is that even? And I said, I think the difference is he's making fun of people,

the absurdity of someone who would not know where they were at 9-11, not 9-11 itself. So that slight difference, I think, is what made it funny. Exactly. There was also a pretty good story about Groupon Super Bowls in 2011. Did you hear about those? No. So for example, they had Timothy Hutton talking about the plight of Tibetans

and how they are all basically just screwed on a daily basis. But they also make a really good fish curry. Oh, I remember that. And you can get a Groupon for it in Chicago for like 20 bucks. And they, well, you guys are the only ones who thought it was funny, apparently, because Groupon was like, everyone's like, what are you doing Groupon? It was like their big debut.

And Timothy Hutton was just like, oh man. Right. Why did I sign it? It seemed funny at the time. I was just starting to come back. Right. Yeah, not anymore. Falcon.

Or was he Snowman? Oh boy. Which one was he? Anyone now? He was Falcon. Oh, I got it right off the bat. To me, he's Turk 182. Is that who that was?

Yeah. Let me see that movie. All right. So where are we? Maybe let's get into the science of the whole thing. Oh, wait. Well, if we're going to do that, we should, Chuck, I think maybe stop here for a message break.

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Okay. All right. So now we're back. We actually do that. We beat for Jerry like that gets her attention because she's doing like 10 other things while she edits us. So are we back? Oh yeah.

Okay. Chuck. Yes. Let's get back to it. Shall we? We should. With the science of it. Right. So like we said earlier with the the fmri when you put somebody into it shows

you where all the blood flows going because it shows you where the oxygen is in the brain and hence you can surmise what is going on what region is lighting up when you activate it doing certain things. And one of the things that they like to do is tell people jokes. Right. Yeah. Or or have them watch like Seinfeld or something. Right.

Which I hope you're a fan of if you're in that study. Even still. How do you not laugh at Seinfeld? Like what kind of soulless person doesn't like sign. No somebody recently I talked to said that their father didn't like it at all hated it and just said he didn't think it was funny. Yeah. And I said his soul is dead inside.

So yeah. And he said yes it is. He's seen too much or something. Something's wrong. So Seinfeld and the Simpsons in one study. Right. Yeah. Two pretty good picks I would say.

So what they found was that our brains actually go through a two part process when we hear a joke. Detection and then there's joke appreciation. And but apparently this is what's going on in the brain. Well yeah it depends on the joke for sure. But the joke detection part is probably the most important because you have to know that you're hearing a joke and your brain is priming you for the appreciation part. But first they have to figure it out.

And all this is going on in the left hemisphere. The reason it all happens in the less the left hemisphere is that that's where we sort through novel information and compare it to experiences we've already had. So when you're hearing something like how do you stop an elephant from charging. You think OK well I've got an image of an elephant charging. I'm ready to go. Come on. What's coming after this.

Plus you're probably trying to like me. I try to figure out a joke sometimes when it's a set up punchline like that. Right. And I'll bet this is a lot about you as a person. I can't wait until they have MRIs that show what you're thinking. What do you mean. Like when you had a display behind you like pretty much. Yeah.

Yeah. Like a thought bubble. You're right. Man I knew it. I knew that's what you were thinking. We also we it's a little more blue at our live ones. I don't know if you've caught that or not. But yeah.

And like what would you think of if someone says like how do you stop an elephant from charging. I would quickly try and figure it out. I think that's just my rider side. And then I probably wouldn't be able to. And then I would hear the punchline ago. That's not very funny. Right.

Well it's not a very funny punchline. It isn't. But once you once you're hearing that the brain's primed. I'm sure there's some sort of cue. It didn't get into this in this article at all. But there's got to be some sort of cue that there's a joke coming. Yeah. Like if you walk up to somebody and say like you know how do you stop an elephant from

charging. Probably just the very virtue. Right. That's funny too. And then the guy like just lays down is like blindly trying to read a book on the ground. So your left the left hemisphere of your brain is working overtime to try to figure out this joke. And depending on what type of joke it is different regions are going to be involved.

Yeah. The I think I guess if you like the joke is in the amygdala. Well that's the reward. So if you like the joke right or not. Right. Yeah. I mean like depending on the type of joke like first over here. Right.

Where the gears are going like your Broca's area is involved with language. So a pun. Right. Is going to make that area work and Broca's area just goes. Yeah. There's no amygdala payoff on that. No. Some people love puns though.

I don't get people like that. Our former colleague Chris Paulette he was famous for his puns. Oh I know. Yeah. It was it was bad like I used to be like stop. Just stop and he somehow come up with a pun from stop. You know. Yeah.

So you got Broca's area. A guy walks into a bar type of joke. We'll get the frontal lobe going that's used with higher reasoning. Apparently those jokes are very high minded typically or whatever. What else. The frontal lobe if you have damage in your frontal lobe they have found that it can prevent you from understanding jokes and punchlines which is really sad. And they apparently tend to prefer slapstick comedy more because you don't

the process as much which I think might have something to do with America's funny some videos. We're all slightly. I'm not saying everyone that loves that show has frontal lobe damage. But maybe. Maybe it's something you can kind of turn on and off depending on whether America's funny or some videos is on. Yeah.

Maybe so. Did you know that to the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 write for that show. No way. And you can tell too because like the quality stepped up quite a bit. Oh they write for it now. I believe so yeah. Within the last few years they were writing for it.

I think Josh just admitted to recently watching that show. It's true. I like that show. I said it at the variety show. I like ridiculousness too. I just like that kind of stuff. Yeah. Turn your brain off.

Yeah but my frontal lobe works just fine everybody. Well you're an intellectual guy so that doesn't surprise me. Sometimes I think if you're like super intellectual you might enjoy just like super based comedy occasionally. Right. Yeah it's true. It's a theory. But I read about this study that came up with the idea that brain damaged people

can't especially frontal lobe. You said can't really appreciate jokes because they can't find the punchline. And one of the ways they tested them was they showed them a joke on paper and it was basically like a kid's interviewing for a summer job. And the employer says well we'll give you $50 to start and then after a month we'll up it to 75. And then the brain damaged patients were to pick out what the punchline was. There was great I'll take it.

When do I start? That's not really it. That's just kind of a boring response. Then there was the punchline which is okay well I'll come back in a month. Again not my joke. And then the one that the brain damaged patients picked typically was hey boss your nose is too big for your face. And can't you just see like the person administering this test

just holding back tears that they were picking that one. But that's what they came up with was you can't really get the punchline. It takes a little bit of thought. It's really sad. So when we do get a joke and get that pay off our old friend Dopamine is what's coming into play that reward is a shot of dopamine via the amygdala that we talked about. And it also explains why it's hard to laugh when you're blue and when you're

sad. I know everyone that's had a friend or a relative or family member that's really down on the dumps you try and cheer them up and sometimes it is just impossible. Why were you just laughing? He just gets so mad. Why was I just laughing? Because you said it surely all of you have had a friend or a family member who's been down in the dump.

Did I sound like a hallmark guard? Yeah, a little bit. It just made me laugh. That's all. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, sometimes it's literally impossible to cheer someone up because the meso limbic reward system turns basically shuts off the dopamine valve and

you're not able to laugh. So it's like their brain is working through the joke. Yeah. But they just can't possibly find it funny because they're meso limbic systems not functioning. And then you might have this sad exchange which is, didn't you get it? And they go, no, I got it. Yeah.

Or when they're like, that was funny. Yeah. But I think it also explains too when they, when you're able to finally reopen that, and this is just my own theory too. Sometimes, you know, when you have that laugh that you really need after being depressed, then sometimes you just can't stop laughing that hysterics, hysterical thing takes over. And I think it's because you just get that rush of dopamine again because your

body craves it. Yeah. Like cigarettes. And when it does pay off, you've got these special helper cells called spindle cells that just shoot it across your brain. So if you see somebody laughing, like uncontrollably, their brain is just basically like zapping itself over and over and over again until the spindle cells just kind of peter out, I guess.

Yeah. I guess we're at the point now where we talk about the uncomfortable topic of men and women and why some people, like Christopher Hitchens, don't think women are funny. Take it, Chuck. Hitchens, God rest his soul, was on record in a very famous Vanity Fair article. What was it called? Why Women Aren't Funny?

I think so. Which is a great way to get a lot of clicks, I guess. Yeah. And he theorized that women just weren't as funny. And I disagree. I think my wife, for one, is hysterical. Well, here's how he explained it. He said that women don't have the same need to be funny that men do, that for

men, it's a tool for reproduction to attract a mate by being funny. And he was saying women just don't need that. I get that. That was pretty much the basis of his argument. It wasn't like he just wrote down, like, women aren't funny. Don't even play. Right. It was a little more thought to it than that.

And at Washington University School of Medicine, they actually did some studies, again, with the Wonder Machine. And they did find some interesting differences between the sexes. Females tend to pick apart verbiage more and derive the more potent mesolimbic reward response when there was a punchline. So I think the general point is that guys may laugh more. Women laugh harder, which I've seen in action. Yeah.

Because guys are kind of dopey, and they'll laugh at anything. Right, yeah. You know? Yeah. But I think women pick it apart more and maybe a little more intellectual about it, but tend to get a lot more out of a joke than a man would in the end. Right. When their spindle cells go crazy, they go crazy.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. What's the magic formula, my friend? It is x equals s times l plus n times o divided by p. I thought you were going to say chardonnay. No. That works. So there's statistics, actually.

Yeah. Kind of, I don't know if it proves that men are funnier. It shows that women get fewer laughs than men, statistically. So if you have a woman speaking to an audience, she's going to get, well, the man's going to get 126 percent more laughs out of that same audience than a female speaker will. Yeah, and a female speaker, especially to an all-male audience, will get even less laughs.

It's science. Yeah, this is not us saying this. Not our jokes, and this is not our position. Yes. They're turning on us. I feel it. Can you open that door? Quick exit.

So again, Christopher Hitchens himself wasn't, like we are saying, it's not like women are funny. But I think there's tons of great female comedians. Well, he made that point, too. He didn't say tons. But I mean, he did make a point. He's saying that you can't possibly say that there are no funny women. There's been some really great ones.

But I think he was saying, just in general, here's why. Right. So I think the reason we bring that up is there's gender differences in humor. Age differences. Yeah. Like we said, it's very much based on context. Yeah. So it's like age, cultural differences, gender.

It all comes into play, and not everyone's going to find everything funny. National differences? Like, apparently we Americans, everyone here American? No. Oh, okay. Well, we're going to let you in on a little secret. Americans tend to think that irony, humor that's not really like mean, is funnier. More positive stuff.

Whereas the Brits think self-deprecation and mean humor is way funnier, too. Yeah, sarcasm. Yeah. So you put a Brit and an American in the same room, tell them the same joke. One of them's probably not going to laugh. Yeah. Unless you're a master at mixing those two things together. I like British humor.

Yeah, I like it, too. It depends. Although, I probably shouldn't say this. Well, you have to now. I don't get Eddie Izzard. I know everybody loves Eddie Izzard. See? It's covered in beans.

It's what? It's covered in beans. That's all you need to know. That's it. I'm not sure that I know what that means. Apparently it's an Eddie Izzard reference. Oh, is it? Is that one of his bits?

Yeah. Okay. He likes his women. Covered in beans. That's kind of fun. That's funny. Yeah. What's your name?

Lance. Lance? You should just do Eddie Izzard material. Maybe it's the presentation that's bothering me. Or the dress. He's like, well... Oh, okay. Yeah, I...

Oh, I'm going to give him another shot now. Yeah, you should. That beast thing was great. Lance Izzard just got his brother Eddie some extra views. So, recent research on Plato and Aristotle's theories abound. The ancient Greeks claim that people laughed at malice of others, misfortune. Yeah, the superiority thing. Yeah, so it goes way back.

I've always laughed at people that face plant apparently or get kicked in the balls. Right. It's good old school humor. I'm telling you, blue. Or they've also found that like bosses, and this is kind of a no brainer. They call it the brown nose effect. Bosses tend to joke more. And if you are an inferior, not inferior, what would you call it?

I guess just an employee. The high man on the totem pole. What would you say? Subordinate. There you go. If you're the subordinate, then you're going to laugh more at your boss's jokes. Just because you're trying to get in there, your brown nose. Well, I saw in that same study, they were saying like that's possibly an explanation,

but they also think that it's more involuntary rather than a strategy. I like the uncomfortable. Not necessarily uncomfortable. It's almost like you just you're more primed to laugh at everything when you are at a low station and a given social situation. Because when you laugh, people tend to like you more. You have a sense of humor. You attract more friends. Right.

So the more friends you have, the more allies you have, the more allies you have, the higher your station rises. So they were saying they didn't think it was like an actual strategy that you just can't help, but titter nervously. You're trying to ingratiate yourself maybe? Yeah, I'm not. I'm just saying other people are. And finally, the last thing I have is that they did some studies on what people do find funny in just daily life. And it's usually not jokes and it's usually not a comedy routine you're watching. It's everyday life.

Apparently only 11% traces back to an actual joke and 72% of daily laughter is just laughing at life and the people around you on a daily basis. Right. And supposedly it's not even funny. Apparently the average person laughs 17.5 times a day. I don't know if we said that. No, we didn't. But I wonder about that half laugh. You know, it's just a hoe or a he wasn't so great, but we'll count it.

But this guy named Robert Provine, who's a laughter humor researcher. He said that most of the stuff that precedes laughter in daily life, which is called most pre laugh dialogue is quote like that of an interminable television situation comedy scripted by an extremely ungifted writer. It's basically just like laughing at just dumb stuff. Yeah. That's not even really funny. It's just kind of said by somebody who you want to like you. Apparently that's the basis of humor.

There's the sysk theory. Boom. You got anything else? I'm done, man. All right. So you want to give our familiar sign off here? Yeah. So if you guys are interested in this kind of thing, you can find this article on how stuff works.com by typing.

Is there a scientific formula for funny in the handy search bar? And since I said handy search bar, it's time for, do you have any listener mail? No, I should have brought one. Well, that's it then, everybody. Thank you very much for coming out and checking out our live podcast. We hope you learned some funny stuff. Laughed a little, loved a little. There you go.

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