The Funniest Joke in the World

Wendy Zuckerman
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to science verses. 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 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 gonna 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 1ft in front of the other. I give you co host of radiolab, Latif NASA. Hello. Hi.

Latif Nasser
Thank you for having me, and I'm honored to be the Frodo to your Batman or whatever is. I'm honored to be here. So, do you wanna know our mission? Yeah. Okay.

Wendy Zuckerman
We're gonna find the funniest joke in the world. Wow. That sounds dangerous. Wow. I know 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.

Latif Nasser
Sure. Like, I'm. 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. That's real bad. Yeah, I can't. So I saw him.

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?

Wendy Zuckerman
A piano. Yeah. I mean, that. That, to me, that's not a joke. That's like a.

Latif Nasser
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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. You know, 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.

Do you think googling the funniest joke probably wasn't, like, a long term solution? Not a long term solution to your problems? Yeah, that's basically where I'm coming from.

But I thought. You thought it was. Couldn't hurt.

Okay, so to start us up, 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 us 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.

Cause it's gonna be different opinions. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And Takashi Wakasugi, who's from Japan, agreed with Teg, 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. We wanna make you feel better.

Takashi Wakasugi
We always do our best. Right. But sometimes we don't know what you want, what you like. Right. And some people make noise if you 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. No, is the suggestion. Yeah, this is hard.

Latif Nasser
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?

Wendy Zuckerman
No. No, Penny, I don't know. I think. I reckon you'll try again. Let's try again.

That was good at second take. Okay. So do you think I can do it? Wendy, I'm your friend, and as your friend, I'm gonna be honest with you. Yeah.

I don't think you will. Mm. With friends like that. Yeah. Latif, I could see your face dropping.

Latif Nasser
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
Like, here's what malaysian comic doctor Jason Leong said. Uh huh. Okay. Wow. I suppose technically it's possible.

Latif Nasser
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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's 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, the critique of the premise was, this is too complicated.

Latif Nasser
Right? Yes. And then this solution for the quest, like, is just go simple, which I think is right. Yeah, I think that's right. Cause, 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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. 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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Latif Nasser
See sign for details.

Wendy Zuckerman
Welcome back. Today on the show, our biggest challenge yet to find the funniest joke in the world. We're here with Latif NASA. 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.

Latif Nasser
And it alternately makes me laugh and 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, why don't you came out of nowhere. Why don't you take your face with the garbage? Cause 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 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, we're the loud laughers of the animal kingdom.

Latif Nasser
What a weird thing. I'm desperately trying to laugh quietly right. Now, but, like, imagine, like, on Noah's ark or whatever, it's like we're the ones laughing, and everyone else, like, oh, God, 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
But 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. 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.

Latif, 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.

Latif Nasser
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. But laughter is also. Can be savage. So there's laughing with.

And there's laughing at is the other thing. Cause 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. Cause we could also.

We could bring the whole world together, but we could aim collectively ridicule and humiliation. We could divide. No, but that, I feel like, to get the funniest joke in the world because. Yes. And studies have found that, surprise, surprise.

Wendy Zuckerman
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. There was a study that was done 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 gonna find the funniest joke in the world, it cannot be. It cannot be othering. We cannot be pregnant, because we're really.

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. Yeah.

Latif Nasser
Yep. Now we've just gotta find this joke. Okay, but where to start? Where to start? I kept pottering around on the Internet, even though that did not give me the funniest joke.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 shia shire for our quest. Oh, that's right. Okay, great.

Latif Nasser
Okay, I'm in. I'm in. So in the early two thousands, Richard was asked to come up with this big science public project. It was for a fancy british science association. He cannot think of anything, but as he's walking through the doors of the.

Richard Wiseman
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 for 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. Well, this is quite funny, because. So I explained our situation.

Latif Nasser
Our situation, of course. I teached my editor that we're gonna 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.

Richard Wiseman
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 said, 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.

Latif Nasser
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
Radical for the two thousands. 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.

Richard Wiseman
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. Right?

Wendy Zuckerman
But it turns out getting publicity was not a problem. Cause 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 jokes. What makes one person laugh could make the next person cringe.

Latif Nasser
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 gun.

Richard Wiseman
He's gonna find the world's funniest joke. And so the hunt begins. And so people rated the jokes on a gigolometer. Yeah, we refer to it as a gigalometer. A gigalometer.

Wendy Zuckerman
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.

It's totally working. People are coming onto the site in droves. But very early on, people start putting dirty jokes onto the website, of course. But then Richard Rich has to be okay with that. No, he's not.

No. So in this experiment, they actually removed the dirty jokes. This was a big family experiment, unlike science versus okay. Oh, got it. So you're doing all the way.

Latif Nasser
All the jokes. We could do all. Yeah, but Richard 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
Okay, okay, so here's the joke. Two cows in the field. One turns to the other and says, moo. And the other one says, oh, I was gonna say that. Not bad, not bad.

Richard Wiseman
Old joke. No joke. That's probably a two or a three on the gigalometer. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. That's two or three.

Wendy Zuckerman
So clearly, that's not gonna 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, huh? 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?

Latif Nasser
Oh, yeah. So you could have two lions. One turns the other in roars, and the other says, I was gonna say that. Less funny. That's less funny.

Wendy Zuckerman
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.

Latif Nasser
No, maybe that's funny. Maybe that's funny. But not because of the noise, but because dogs are so relatable. Mmm. Okay, so.

Wendy Zuckerman
So Richard puts a bunch of these jokes into the database. When people come on, they might be randomly given one of those jokes. Oh, so which do you think is the funniest? Quack. Quack.

Yes, it was. That was the winner. Dam. Okay, two ducks. One says, quack, and the other one says, I was gonna 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 wanna play? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Juju.

Latif Nasser
Juju is funny. Yeah. Juju. Chauffeur. Chauffeur.

Wendy Zuckerman
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. Cause Holder is so functional. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. And, you know, you basically pick 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. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the researchers then 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. I'm almost more curious. What are the words at the very bottom of the list? Okay.

Very interestingly, the least funny word study is harassment. Harassment.

Latif Nasser
That makes me want to make a joke where the punchline is harassment, doesn't it? So the research is, like, 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 there's comedy k. So there's an episode of the Simpsons about it. Like, comedians know about this?

Wendy Zuckerman
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 Kendall clinic.

Latif Nasser
That was good. Now, as far as I could tell, no one has repeated this experiment in a non english language. Mmm. And because we're looking for the funniest joke in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wendy Zuckerman
I wanted to ask comics about this in other languages, so we're kind of stuck with anecdotes, unfortunately. But I asked egyptian comic Mohammad Magdi, what is a funny word in Arabic? Oh, crap. And this is what he said. I think the word for shell, like, the shell that you find on the beach, is quite funny.

Latif Nasser
It's called kauka. Kauka. Yeah. Yeah. So if you.

Just. Two k's. Yeah, two ks. There you go. Actually, you're right.

Oh, my God. Science does work.

Wendy Zuckerman
What?

Latif Nasser
I love that. That's the thing. It's like he was like, oh, vaccines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess.

I guess, maybe. But, like, it's like, oh, but this k thing, like, oh, we're really onto something here. So other sounds in English that are funny. Yeah. Oo oo sounds so, like.

Wendy Zuckerman
Booby. Booby. Yeah, sure. As well as words ending in Y and l, so, like, giggle and waddle are also funnier. Yeah.

As a general rule, letters and sounds that aren't very common tend to rate as funnier. So curt sound is pretty rare. And also, like, if you have this weird collection of sounds in a word, that tends to be funny. So I talked about this with 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 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.

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. All right, huh?

Latif Nasser
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 uruj Ashvak about this.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 chinch pokli, which is.

Yeah, that's very funny. It's really funny. It's a. Chinch pokli. It's a place.

It's a place. Chinch pokli. And every time someone says it does. Have a k, right? Chinch pokkli.

Yes, you're right. But that's not why it's funny, right? I don't. Maybe it's. It's the ginge.

Yes. It's. It's. It's so thin, and then the pokli is so wide, and you're like, why'd you put that together?

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 uruj told me about one more and we're about to get a little bit rude here.

Latif Nasser
Great. Is oo funny in India? Oo is funny. I think oo is funny. Goo.

Uruj Ashfaq
Oh my God, the word goo is so funny. And goo basically means shit. And so eat shit in Hindi is gukha. And that usually gets a laugh. So after the break, we're gonna hear the winner of Richard's experiment.

Wendy Zuckerman
And will we find the funniest joke in the world? Who knows? Who knows? Could go either way. Could go either way.

Latif Nasser
Here.

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Wendy Zuckerman
We're back on our grand quest to find the funniest joke in the world. I am your dungeon master, and my paladin is Latif NASA. 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, 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 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, we're gonna 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.

Richard Wiseman
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
How did it rate? Well, no, no, no. He's always down there with pianos.

Richard Wiseman
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? Yes.

Latif Nasser
Competition? Yes. Yes. Do you want to do a little drum roll, by the way? I just.

Oh, shit.

Wendy Zuckerman
Bing. There are two hunters out in the woods. One of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing. His eyes are glazed.

Richard Wiseman
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?

Latif Nasser
That was good. That was good. I liked it. So I told it to a bunch of our comedians. Okay.

Wendy Zuckerman
To rather mixed reviews. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's hear it.

Latif Nasser
That's a great joke. It's just dumb. Yeah. Yeah. That's the winner.

Wendy Zuckerman
Really? Really. 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. It's a joke.

Latif Nasser
It's a joke. Well done. But try harder. You know what I mean? That last harsh critique is comedian Jason Leong.

Wendy Zuckerman
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.

Latif Nasser
Murder. It's like a wholesome murder joke, you know, funny. I asked Richard what he thought about it. What did you, how did you feel when your colleagues came to you and were like, this is the winner? And you read that?

Wendy Zuckerman
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 when that came out. And each time you sort of grind.

Richard Wiseman
And 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
But what's funny is that, like, even though it didn't make me laugh and Richard doesn't really like it, 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 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.

Richard Wiseman
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 and a tank.

We think it's a fish tank, and then we find out they're 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. An army tank, too.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 joke.

Latif Nasser
Yeah. Also conceptual bifurcation. I feel like both of those words would rank very low on your spreadsheet.

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. So he's a sort of 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 a piece of observational comedy. 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 or 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.

Hmm. And I told Tig Nataro the hunter joke. It was kind of funny. Cause 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.

Richard Wiseman
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
And it does explain some jokes, because in so many cultures, there are these jokes about what some researchers call the fool towns or fool places. So in Australia, if you start a joke with two Tasmanians, walk into 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. 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 Abderrah, you know.

Latif Nasser
The two Abderas, Abdera. To walk into a bar. 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 then.

Wendy Zuckerman
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. 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.

Latif Nasser
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 for some reason sent their snafu to a nineties tv channel. Right. But if they didn't get up and they just, like, were dead.

Latif Nasser
Yeah. Right. That's not funny. We're not laughing at that anymore. So to go back to the hunter joke just for a second, even though it ticks these scientific boxes like we talked about, it's not funny.

Wendy Zuckerman
And so I thought, oh, 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. Like his experiment. He did the right thing. They got the sample size. They asked people many countries around the world.

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.

Richard Wiseman
It's the average joke. It's the kind of like. Yes, right. No, I think. I think what I've learned from talking to you, nothing.

You've learned nothing. Nothing. Is that. Yeah. Where you went wrong was asking thousands and thousands of people for their.

Where we went wrong was starting. A. Little downhill from there. Okay, so Richard has completely lost hope in our quest in fighting the funniest joke in the world. Yeah, I feel like there was three of us, and now there's just two of us.

Latif Nasser
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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 hunting for jokes that might fit the bill. You've done a lot of research here, Wendy. I'm very impressed.

Yeah. So two jokes in my search, I thought do tick a lot of these boxes, and I did actually find funny. Okay. Okay. So, lice, if.

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?

Latif Nasser
I don't know how. Pick him up and suck his cock. That was. That was good. Cause it was.

That was. Yeah, that was not where I expected you were gonna go, but it was funny. It's got the k. The comedy k, the suck and cock and 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
Go on. I think. 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, when that image lands, it's like, whoa. Brilliant. Yeah, that's very funny. Oh, my God.

Uruj Ashfaq
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 saying it, because I know you would never. I just. Thank you. I love. That's the vibe I give that I won't suck off a dog.

Wendy Zuckerman
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.

Uruj Ashfaq
Would they love this joke? In the right hands, this joke could be viral. That's a billion people right there. Right. So maybe science is getting us close.

Latif Nasser
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. But I thought, like, you didn't love it, you didn't love it. But I'm like, I'm a polite canadian. I grew up in a quite religious household, sex jokes are very, like.

I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like, that was funny. But. So let's.

Wendy Zuckerman
Let's take it down a. Not, 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 chinchpokkli, two monkeys were having a bath. One monkey says. And the other says, we'll put the cold tap on then.

Latif Nasser
Oh, that one.

That one was not funny. I don't know why. Cause it had chinchpokly in it and everything. Monkeys. Monkeys have a k.

That's fine. Funny monkeys. And then there was a conceptual bifurcation. There was a conceptual bifurcation. Yeah.

I don't know why it didn't land. 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
That's good. That's good. I think it's better than a hunter joke. Yeah, that's wholesome. I like this one.

Uruj Ashfaq
I really like this one. I like it better. It's so funny.

Latif Nasser
Yeah. Oh, okay. Wow. I'm sorry. That one.

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? That was your, like. I don't know. I mean, I feel like we're weary, our clothes are torn, shoes worn through the soles.

Yeah. And it's here where. Where we've lost all hope, perhaps, that our journey takes a different path. So, yeah, here in Chinch Pokli, we're gonna cognitively bifurcate paths. That's right.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 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.

Uruj Ashfaq
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. 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 there is a moment and magic happens. And I'm so sorry to defy. I'm so sorry to defy this entire podcast purpose. Oh, yeah. And so, Latif, I abandoned science, too.

Wendy Zuckerman
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? Yeah.

And they told me to fulfill 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, lassif, have I found yours? I don't know. Cause I got a couple more for you. Great. Keep going.

Just a couple more. So. Okay, great. Professor Richard Wiseman. Ooh, what was his favorite joke?

Latif Nasser
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay, this was it. Desperate to hear that the elephant and the mouse.

Richard Wiseman
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?

Wendy Zuckerman
So I.

Richard Wiseman
Like, I always like that joke. It always kind of makes me. Makes me smile.

Latif Nasser
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 our chat, gave me this gem.

Wendy Zuckerman
And what, 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. Idiot. I have a one fart, fart joke. Yeah, go hit me with it.

Takashi Wakasugi
I was watching Mubi by myself, laid on the couch, relaxed, and I did fart. That was a bad fart. I mean, wet 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 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 time, past time in my life, I discovered why our human butt shaped like this, like a w in Alphabet with a small space. I'm crying. I'm laughing so hard.

I call it hope. That small space is gonna save you, and you aren't aware from shitting yourself. Next time you shit yourself, please don't give up, because there is always hope there, and it's very heartwarming.

Wendy Zuckerman
All right, so, Latif, of all of the jokes that you've heard today, have we found your favourite? I'm very happy with, um. Take your face. Uh, I still think that one is pretty good. I'm going to take out the garbage.

Latif Nasser
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. What's your funniest joke? The. The hope. But, I mean, hopefully hope is great.

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. Like, if someone were to say any good jokes. Yeah.

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

In your butt talk. I would use buttock 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 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.

Wendy Zuckerman
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 gotta check out our Instagram and my TikTok because the team has made these awesome little videos of the comics that you heard from. And, oh, it's just so funny. If you wanna go see little snippets of the comedians telling jokes, head to our Instagram, which is science versus, and my TikTok is Wendyzukaman.

Also, next Tuesday, we're putting a little special episode down the Feed, which is my full interview with us comedian Tig Nataro. 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 Rimler and Meryl Horne were edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact Checking by Sarah Baum 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 saw spoke to, including Doctor Andrew Farkas, Professor Penny McDonald, Doctor Maggie Prenger, and a huge thank you to Professor Chris Westbrey for sharing your amazing spreadsheet of the funniest words. Another big thanks to Lindsay Farber, Roland Campos, Lauren Lodou Deshay, 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 Lavelle Wilson science versus is a Spotify studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We are all over the place. You can listen to us anywhere. But if you are listening on Spotify, follow us and tap the bell icon so youll get notifications when new episodes of science versus come out.

I'm Wendy Zuckerman. I'll back to you next time.

The Funniest Joke in the World

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Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1. Introduction

2. The Subjectivity of Humor

3. Scientific Perspectives on Humor

4. Experimenting with Jokes

5. Concluding Insights

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