The Funniest Joke in the World

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus.

Today on the show, we're pitting facts against funnies.

And by the way, today

is our 200th episode of Science Versus.

Can you believe it?

200 episodes.

That is so many facts versus other things.

Thank you so much for listening and for being on this big journey with us.

It's been so fun.

And so to celebrate our 200th episode, 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 there's kids 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 Radio Lab, Latif Nasser.

Hello!

Hi, thank you for having me.

And I'm honored to be the

Brodo 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 gonna find the funniest joke in the world wow that sounds dangerous wow i know i know it's it sounds dangerous it sounds big but i'm gonna keep it safe i'm gonna keep it safe 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, I'm, I, you know, did you hear about the rancher who had 97 cows in his field?

When he rounded them up, he had a hundred.

Oh, that was not even.

That's, that's real bad.

Yeah.

It's, uh, I kept

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, that, to me, that's not a joke.

That's like a, 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, 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.

You know, there's like a lot of other things that you could do.

But just not to, I'm not judging your life for anything.

No, no, that's, you think Googling the funniest joke probably wasn't like a long-term solution.

It's not a long-term solution to your problems.

Yeah, that's basically

where I'm coming from.

But I thought

it wasn't.

It couldn't happen.

Okay, so to start us off, I wanted to know if it was even possible to find the funniest joke in the world.

So I asked a bunch of comedians this very question.

Okay, great.

So here are their answers.

So this is what U.S.

comedian Tig Nataro.

Brilliant comedian.

Yes, said.

She was not optimistic.

Do you think we can find this joke?

Sure, over and over and over again, because it's going to be different opinions.

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 want to make you feel feel better.

We always do our best.

Right.

But sometimes we don't know what you want, what you like.

Right.

And some people make noise.

Right.

Like it.

And some people don't make noise, even though if they enjoy it.

And you think, and you can't use the same technique on everyone is the suggestion.

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 Greenhalge.

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 again.

Let's try it again.

Let's try again.

That was good.

I'm not good at second type.

Okay, so do you think I can do it?

Wendy, I am your friend.

And as your friend, I'm going to be honest with you.

Yeah.

I don't think you will.

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 like here's what malaysian comic dr jason leong said uh-huh okay wow i suppose technically it's possible i suppose technically it's possible that's 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, Lonnie Love, in fact, had so much optimism for us that she even gave us our first clue.

This is something simple that people usually laugh at.

And it is right there in front of your face.

You know, it's right there.

And it's something that everybody can laugh at.

It's funny because like to the critique of the premise was this is too complicated, right?

Yes.

And then, and then this solution for the quest, like, is just 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 8 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, it's still, it's helping lots of people Yeah, yeah.

Put a smile on their face, you know?

Yes, yes, yeah.

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.

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Welcome back.

Today on the show, our biggest challenge yet to find the funniest joke in the world.

We're here with Latif Nassau.

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?

Okay, so this is the thing that my two-year-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 that

like you 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 where they're really ticklish.

So they're just sort of between the shoulder blades.

Primates, like chimps,

do a laugh.

Chimpanzees laugh.

It sounds very like our laughter.

It's like a kind of

sound.

This is an actual chimp laughing.

Isn't her impersonation very good?

She did great.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was 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.

Like for us humans, like we're the loud laughers of the animal kingdom.

Like what a weird weird thing like desperately trying to laugh quietly right now you're smoking

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 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.

Right.

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.

Huh.

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.

But 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, not to throw a monkey wrench in here

to your...

But so it's true.

Laughter is this thing that, you know, it's like you laugh and the whole world laughs with you and da da da da.

Yes.

But laughter is also

can be savage.

So there's laughing with and there's there's laughing at is the other thing because it's like who's the butt of the joke and how.

So it's like, so we're playing with some high,

like high stakes here because we could also, we could bring the whole world together, but we could

aim collectively ridicule and humiliation.

We could divide

but that I feel like to get the funniest joke in the world, because yes, and studies have indeed found that surprise, surprise, if you if you make

ethnic and racist jokes if you are of that group being ridiculed or if you even just care about the group being ridiculed you find the joke less funny um there was a a study that was done if on uh on blasphemous jokes that practicing christians found them less funny than atheists even though generally they had very similar sense of humor so i feel like because of this if we're going to find the funniest joke in the world it cannot be it cannot be othering we cannot be because we're really we need we need to maximize the amount of people that we are bringing joy to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, but I agree.

Okay.

So with that in mind, with the stakes truly set for this quest.

Yep.

Now we've just got to find this joke.

Okay.

But where to start?

Where to start?

I kept pottering around on the internets, 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.

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.

I 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.

I mean, now all we have, I guess, is some like 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 Ture 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.

Okay, well, then they come up with a plan, a radical plan.

Okay.

Radical for the 2000s.

We decided people would come onto the internet, the newly formed internet,

they would type in their favorite joke and submit it, and they would rate the jokes 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 gunny's going to find the world's funniest joke.

And so,

the hunt begins.

And so, people rated the jokes on a gigalometer.

Yeah, we refer to it as a gigalometer.

A gigalometer.

Gigalometer.

Gigalometer.

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 on to absolutely hilarious.

Okay, so the ranking is one to five.

Okay.

Totally working.

People are coming onto the site in droves.

Great.

Very, very early on.

People start putting dirty jokes onto the website, of course.

But then Richard.

You have to be okay with that.

No?

He's not?

No.

So in this experiment, they actually removed the dirty jokes because this was a big family experiment, unlike

science versus okay.

Oh, oh, got it.

So you're doing, you're doing all the all the way, all the jokes.

We could do all, yeah, but Richard removes removes the rude jokes.

Okay.

But then, as the competition is trucking along,

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

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 oh I was gonna say that

not bad old old joke old joke that's probably a two or a three on the gigalometer yeah yeah I would agree that's two or 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 to the other and roars, and the other says, I was going to say that.

Less funny, that's less funny.

Interesting, interesting.

Okay, okay, so um, other ones, they tried two birds going cheap, cheap, two ducks, one says quack, then there's two dogs,

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.

Mmm.

Okay.

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 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 says 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.

Wriggly, 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.

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.

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.

Yeah.

So the researchers then poured poured over this data set 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.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Um, I'm almost more curious: what are the words at the very bottom of the list?

Okay, very interestingly, I the least funny word

according to this

study is harassment.

Harassment.

That makes me want to make a joke where the punchline is.

Harassment.

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 click.

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 Mohammed Maghdi, 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.

Cauca?

Yeah, 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?

I love that that's the thing.

It's like he was like, oh, vaccines?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess maybe.

But it's like, oh, but this K thing, like, oh, we're really onto something here.

So other sounds in English that are funny

are ooh, ooh sounds.

So like booby, whoop, booby.

Yeah, sure.

As well as words ending in why and le,

so like giggle and waddle are also funny.

Yeah.

As a general rule, um, letters and sounds that aren't very common tend to rate as funnier.

So curt sound is pretty rare.

Um, 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 um comedian Tig Nataro.

So

we were 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, 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 well.

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 Rujashfak 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 chinch pokli.

Chinchpokli.

It's a place.

It's a place.

Chinchpokli.

Chinchpokli.

And every time someone says, it does have a K, right?

Chinchpokli.

Yes, you're it.

But that's not why it's funny, right?

I don't, maybe it's, it's the chinch.

Yeah.

Is it so thin, and then the pokhli is so wide.

And you're like,

why did you put that together?

Chinch pokly.

Chinchpokli.

Chinchpokli.

Chinchpokli, right?

Oh, so good.

Satisfying.

It's a neighborhood 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 ooh funny in India?

Ooh, is funny.

I think is funny.

Goo.

Oh my god, the word goo is so funny.

And go basically means

shit.

And so the

eat shit in Hindi is gooka.

Guka.

And that usually gets a laugh.

So after the break, we're gonna 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.

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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 humor, so making fun of themselves, while Russia and Estonia scored high on aggressive humor that might involve belittling or teasing others.

So there are some differences.

But the thing is,

for all these

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, 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.

As long as we stick to universal themes, sex, bodily fluids, family dynamics, like we're going to up our chances of finding this joke.

But which is why bodies are 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 What's Brown and Sticky, a stick.

Oh, yeah.

If I read that one more time, every morning, three or four people had put that in.

How is it?

Did it rate well?

No.

No, no, no.

It was always down there with pianos.

It was,

so it 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.

Do you want to do a little drum roll, 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, now what?

That was good.

That was good.

I liked it.

So, I told it to a bunch of our comedians.

Um, okay, to

rather mixed reviews.

Okay, okay, okay, let's hear it.

That's a great joke.

It's just dumb.

Yeah, yeah,

that's the winner.

If you had like A plus funniest joke in the world, F, a bad joke, what are you rating it?

I will give it a passing grip.

It passes as a joke.

Wow, it passes as a joke.

Like, that's where it gets.

You were aware that.

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 a wholesome murder joke, you know?

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 came out.

And each time you sort of grind through, 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 they 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 humor.

Okay, great.

One of the biggest theories of humor 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 nother 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 and a tank.

One turns to the other and says, do you know how to drive this

love it love it

so we have fish and a tank we think it's a fish tank and then we find out they're in an army tank that's incongruous 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 an army tank too ha ha

um 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 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, 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 is also 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, research has 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 Nataro 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 form.

It is a very depressing form.

And it does explain some jokes because like 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

Abderas.

Abdera.

Walking to our.

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.

We're just like so petty and insecure.

Like we need something to feel bigger than.

Yeah.

I really don't.

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.

I think so too.

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 if they didn't get up and they just like

would

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, even though it ticks these scientific boxes, like we talked about, it's not funny.

And so I thought, or to me, any, oh, I don't know.

It's

the funniest.

It's not the funniest.

It's not the funniest.

And so I asked Richard, like, like his experiment, you know, it 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.

It's so you can look at any one group, you can look at men or women or young or old or Canadians.

And there was 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.

It's the average joke.

It's the kind of like, yeah, no, I think, I think what I've learned from talking to you.

Nothing.

You've learned nothing.

Nothing.

Is that where you went wrong was asking thousands and thousands of people for their

where we went wrong was starting that

little downhill from there.

Okay, so Richard has completely lost hope in our quest in finding the funniest joke in the world.

Yeah, I feel like

there was three of us and now there's just two of us.

He just turned and left.

But I say there is hope.

I say there is hope.

I think it was this getting this median democratic voting system going.

I think that's where he went wrong.

And so I think if we, instead of going to the voting polls, we go granular.

We use the techniques that we've learned today, the funny words, the sounds, the different theories of humor.

So I have scoured joke books and listicles and social media, and I've gone to comedy sets, hours of comedy, and hunting for jokes that might fit the bill.

You've done a lot of research here, Wendy.

I'm very impressed.

Yeah.

So, so two jokes in my search, I thought,

do tick a lot of these boxes and i did actually find funny okay okay so light

could this be the winner to our competition could this be the funniest joke in the world okay all right so

how do you stop a dog from humping your leg

i don't know how pick him up and suck his cock

That was that was good because it was uh it was that was

Yeah, that was not where I expected you were going to go.

But it was funny.

It's got the comic, it's got the K, the comedy K, that's the suck and cock, the rude words.

Suck, cock, yeah.

Incongruity, surprise, bit of tension.

It did pretty good with the comics.

It beat out the hunter joke, that's for sure.

Really?

Pick him up and suck his cock.

I say, I'm so sorry.

No, that's funny.

See, that's funny to me.

And I feel bad now.

I think it's more relatable.

Go on.

I think dogs humping is a problem,

don't you think?

It's just impolite.

People are desperate for a solution.

I think they are desperate for a solution.

And so you do, you rack your brains.

As soon as someone says, how do you stop a dog from humping your leg?

And then they go to

pick him up and suck his cock.

That's crazy.

You know, know when it cut when that image lands it's like whoa

brilliant yeah that's very funny oh my god

ah

oh i love it

it's disgusting it's a dog leave it alone

but it's so funny because I think it has something to do with you seeing it because I know you would never.

I just...

thank you.

That's beep was.

I love that's the vibe I give that I won't suck off a dog.

Never.

Do you think would it translate around the world?

Would it translate in India?

Oh my god, they would love it.

Oh my god, would they love this joke?

In the right hands, this joke would be viral.

That's a billion people right there, right?

So I maybe science is getting us close.

But I thought, like, you didn't love it.

You didn't love it.

I'm, but I'm like a, I'm a, I'm a polite Canadian.

I grew up in a quite religious household.

Sex jokes are very like,

like, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, like, that was funny.

But so let's, let's take it down and like, I think, I can't, I don't think the funniest joke, also, you know, there's kids listening, probably not anymore.

That's right.

But

there were kids listening.

Right.

All right.

So I've got another joke for you, okay, which I've adapted a little for our purposes.

I think you'll see.

Okay.

In this neighborhood in Mumbai called Chinchpokhli, two monkeys were having a bath.

One monkey says,

and the other says, oh, we'll put the cold tap on then.

That one.

That one was not funny.

I don't know why.

Because it had chinchpokhli in it and everything.

Monkeys, monkeys have a K.

That's funny.

Monkeys, and then

there was a conceptual bifurcation

of the there was a conceptual bifurcation.

Yeah, I don't know why it didn't.

It didn't, it didn't land.

Interesting.

Okay, so this is what the comics thought of the monkey joke.

And the other says, we'll put the cold tap on then.

That's good.

That's good.

Okay, it's better than the joke.

Yeah.

That's wholesome.

I like this one.

I really like this one.

I like it better.

It's so funny.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, that's

for me.

It's here at the like final stage of our quest, you know?

Right.

And was that your, so that was the that was that was your touchdown dance?

Wow.

That was your like.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like we're weary.

our clothes are torn, shoes worn through the soles.

Yeah.

And it's here

where we've lost all hope, perhaps, that our journey takes a different path.

So

here in Chinchpoklu, we're going to cognitively bifurcate ads.

That's right.

The sun is rising, and we squint at the bright light as Uruj appears.

So Uruj used to study psychology before her comedy career took off.

And when she first started doing doing stand-up, she actually read about all these theories of humor.

The incongruity, surprise, misdirection.

You like looked into the psychology of it.

You tried to study this like a science?

Exactly.

And then at some point, I was like, none of it is real.

It's the comedy gods.

Really?

It's the comedy gods.

I'm sorry, I know I'm on a science podcast, but I strongly believe in the comedy gods.

Just, I was an atheist and a scientist, and I'm a believer now.

Because I just went on so many stages.

it's all across india i performed in cafes i performed in bars i performed for corporate shows i did birthday parties i did baby showers i did comedy clubs and i was like there is a force there is a superior force and it is there is a moment and magic happens and uh i'm so sorry to defy

I'm so sorry to defy this entire podcast purpose.

Yeah.

And so Latif, I abandoned science too.

I went to the comedy gods.

Okay.

And I asked them, what can I do?

I've got this episode called The Funniest Joke in the World.

What can I do?

And they told me to fulfill my, our quest, our quest.

If we can each find our own.

favorite joke to put a smile on our faces when we're feeling down a joke so that we don't ever have to use google and find some crappy joke about pianos and keys okay and maybe like the audience listening maybe we've already found yours maybe it's the dog humping joke or the monkey or the fish in the tank so

last if have i found yours i don't know because i i got a couple more for you great keep going just a couple more so okay great professor richard wiseman oh what was his favorite joke yes yeah yes okay this was it desperate to hear that The elephant and the mouse.

And the elephant says to the mouse, why am I so big and strong and you're so weak and puny and the mouse looks up and says well i've been ill haven't i

so i

i

i like i always like that joke it always kind of makes me makes me smile

that's good just finally just finally yeah takashi wakasugi

who was one of the most critical that we could find the funniest joke in the world towards the end of of our chat gave me this gem.

And what made him think of it was he was really puzzling over something that could make everyone laugh.

It's gonna be a fart.

It's gonna be a fart.

That's the, you know,

yes.

And what kind of fart?

Like a big, like any fart.

Or like a

sign, yes.

I have a one

fart joke.

I was

watching a movie by myself.

I laid on the couch, relaxed, and then

I did fart.

That was the bad fart.

I mean, weighty fart.

A wet one.

And actually, I shit myself.

And life is very tough.

Life is not easy.

And then I said, I have to throw away my underwear.

I have to take a shower.

I hate myself.

And I went to the bathroom, tried to take all my clothing.

And I saw my underwear was

clean.

I shit myself a little bit, but my underwear is clean.

And

that first time in my life, I discovered why

our human butt

shaped like this, like a W alphabet.

There's a small space.

I'm crying, I'm laughing so yeah.

I call it hope.

That small space is going to save you, and you are underwear from shitting yourself.

So next time if you shit yourself,

please don't give up because there is always hope there.

And it's very

heartwarming.

All right.

So, Latip, of all of the jokes that you've heard today,

have we found your favorite?

I'm very happy with

Take Your Face.

I still 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.

What about you?

What's your funniest joke?

The

hope.

I mean,

hope is great.

That was great.

I've definitely found a lot of jokes to put a smile on my face that are not about a piano.

Yeah.

Like, if someone were to say,

How any good jokes?

Yeah.

I'd be like, there's this area in your, in your butt,

in your butt talk.

I would use butt talk because there's a K in it.

Yes.

And it's called hope.

And it's called hope.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming on the show.

Thank you.

I feel lighter.

I feel, yeah,

I feel great.

And I, and now, I mean,

the kind of news you can use of this is like, I know what to do next time a dog is humping my leg.

This episode had 58 citations in it.

And if you want to see them in all of their glory, then head to the show notes and click on a link to the transcript.

Also, this week, you've got to check out our Instagram and my TikTok because the team has made these awesome little videos of the comics that you heard from.

And it's just so funny.

So if you want to go see little snippets of the comedians telling jokes, head to our Instagram, which is science underscore the S.

And my TikTok is at WendyZuckerman.

Also, next Tuesday, we're putting a little special episode down the feed, which is my full interview with US comedian Tignataro.

There was just so many laughs and so much insight into comedy that she gave us that we couldn't fit into this episode.

So we thought we'd just share the whole interview with you.

So that'll go down the feed on Tuesday.

This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Joel Werner, Rose Rimmler, and Meryl Horn.

We're edited by Blive Terrell.

Fact-checking by Sarah Bourne.

Mix and sound design by Bobby Lorde.

Music written by Peter Leonard, Booby Hidaka, Emma Munger, So Wiley and Bobby Lorde.

A huge thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr.

Andrew Farkas, Professor Penny McDonald, Dr.

Maggie Prenca, 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 Kervos, Lauren Lodu Deschey, 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 LaBelle Wilson.

Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original.

Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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You can listen to us anywhere.

But if you are listening on Spotify, follow us and tap the bell icon so you'll get notifications when new episodes of Science Versus come out.

I'm Wendy Zuckerman.

I'll back you next time.