Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna be talking dad jokes? Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: how did we end up here? So? I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about it over the weekend. Basically, I was I,
Speaker 1: you know, dad jokes are I think a familiar concept
Speaker 1: for most of us. Um. I don't remember being a
Speaker 1: named thing when I was growing up, but at some
Speaker 1: point in my pre parenthood life it became a thing.
Speaker 1: And even non dad's would get called out for dad
Speaker 1: jokes at times. And uh now as a as a parent,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a frequent call out, you know, not
Speaker 1: only in this house, but but I hear it with
Speaker 1: with my friends who are who are parents, uh and
Speaker 1: also among again friends who are not parents. It's often
Speaker 1: a critique of someone else's joke, often from a child,
Speaker 1: more from a spouse, but sometimes it's a self commentary
Speaker 1: on one's own joke. And I guess I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: too much about it. I didn't like, I wasn't too
Speaker 1: self reflective on the concept until until very recently My
Speaker 1: my son is is eight going on nine, and he's
Speaker 1: definitely at the point where he is capable of sarcastic
Speaker 1: laughter for particularly punny jokes, particularly you know, any kind
Speaker 1: of like uh, perhaps too lame of an attempted humor.
Speaker 1: He is liable to respond with sarcasm. And while he
Speaker 1: won't say, oh, that's a dad joke, like, clearly we
Speaker 1: are in dad joke territory. And so I just started pondering, like,
Speaker 1: what does this mean? What is the dad joke? Is
Speaker 1: the dad joke a thing? Uh? And if it is, like,
Speaker 1: how might we um quantify it? And what does it
Speaker 1: reveal about things like childhood development or humor itself? So
Speaker 1: in your experience, what is the age where where the
Speaker 1: child stops rewarding you for criminally weak puns and and
Speaker 1: starts punishing you for them. Um, I guess we're kind
Speaker 1: of in that territory right now. Like it's not I
Speaker 1: still get get lots of laughs, I'm still pretty good,
Speaker 1: I know my audience pretty well, but I'm I'm rolling
Speaker 1: out more and more jokes that that he is liable
Speaker 1: to either half laugh at or enjoy the awfulness of
Speaker 1: the pun. Uh. And part of that I guess is
Speaker 1: him picking up on my delivery as well, Like, if
Speaker 1: I know that it's a particularly lame joke, I'm probably
Speaker 1: going to lean into that delivery, you know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it was definitely a thing you'd see with
Speaker 1: like Dad's on TV the when you were a kid
Speaker 1: that like that. Yes, they embarrass their teenager adolescent kids
Speaker 1: by telling grown worthy jokes and then get punished with
Speaker 1: the dad. Yeah. You know. This actually came up in
Speaker 1: one of the sources I ended up looking at for this,
Speaker 1: because because after I was thinking about it, I was like,
Speaker 1: surely I'm not the only one kind of lighting this,
Speaker 1: and I'm certainly not. But I looked at this one article, uh,
Speaker 1: this one post title please stop calling My humor dad
Speaker 1: Jokes by Andrew Bougon. Uh. This was from twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: published in The Washington I in and um, they basically
Speaker 1: made two two points. And I have to stress that
Speaker 1: this wasn't like a super serious article like he was.
Speaker 1: The authors very much engaging and you know, the humorous
Speaker 1: nature and the low stakes aspect of the topic. But
Speaker 1: they did bring up the idea of ages um and
Speaker 1: dad jokes, but also the idea that they tend to
Speaker 1: depend uh, some interpretations of them tend to depend on
Speaker 1: outdated gender roles in the household, in which the mom
Speaker 1: handles all the whole hard work around the house and
Speaker 1: dad just kind of wanders into the room from time
Speaker 1: to time to score an easy laugh with the kids.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's the kind of thing reflected
Speaker 1: in this sitcom model that you're you're discussing here, With
Speaker 1: a lot of American sitcoms like it, it fell upon
Speaker 1: the mom character to be the respond constable one in
Speaker 1: the family, and the dad got to be the goofball,
Speaker 1: you know, the Homer Simpson right, right. Um. So, I
Speaker 1: mean not to say there wasn't truth to the trope,
Speaker 1: but it's probably a situation too where having this trope
Speaker 1: so readily occur in our sitcom culture, it kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, echoes back on us. You know, it reverberates
Speaker 1: back on the culture itself, and we lean into it
Speaker 1: even more, you know. Okay, So I assume at this
Speaker 1: point most people are familiar with what a dad joke is,
Speaker 1: But then again, I don't know. I often feel disconnected
Speaker 1: from terms that people use in this Internet age, especially
Speaker 1: since I'm like trying not to look at the social
Speaker 1: media's and all that. So like for people who are
Speaker 1: not so familiar, what makes a dad joke a dad
Speaker 1: joke in the parlance of our times, all right, in
Speaker 1: the parlance of our times, Dude, they are they're they're
Speaker 1: jokes that are a bit on the lane side in
Speaker 1: some estimates. They're often punny, and that they use puns,
Speaker 1: and they're generally family friendly. Uh. And the punchline, I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out how the best phrase. I'
Speaker 1: like the punchline hits like a crashing clown car. And
Speaker 1: your intended audience, like the ideal audience that is actually
Speaker 1: going to laugh at this joke is five to seven
Speaker 1: year olds. You know they're abouts, um, but that is
Speaker 1: in this is key regardless of the current age ages
Speaker 1: of those presents. So you might be in the you
Speaker 1: might be in the room with say a forty something
Speaker 1: and a teenager, but you're still firing out jokes like
Speaker 1: you have a whole room full of five to seven
Speaker 1: year olds. Now, you mentioned that these jokes are often
Speaker 1: puns and that they're often family friendly. Of course, dad
Speaker 1: jokes do tend towards very much like uh, simple word play,
Speaker 1: and what might be called clean comedy. But another tendency
Speaker 1: I've noticed in dad jokes is, I don't even know
Speaker 1: what you'd call this, the tendency to make a joke
Speaker 1: that is, uh, that is edgy to a really tame extent.
Speaker 1: And so this might involve, say, references to people's butts
Speaker 1: or extremely minor crude language. So one example cited in
Speaker 1: a New York Times article that we're about to talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: the author mentions the joke, what has two butts and
Speaker 1: kills people an assassin? Uh? Okay, Yeah, that that is
Speaker 1: a little edgy for the for the young crowd. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not to me. That's very much in the
Speaker 1: in what is understood to be the dad joke zone,
Speaker 1: because it is a joke that simultaneously violates some kind
Speaker 1: of taboo with the use of the word ass but
Speaker 1: it is an extremely minor taboo. Yeah, I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: Bart Simpson would love that joke. Uh. So it's it
Speaker 1: is it is aimed appropriately, and yeah, there there is
Speaker 1: this tendency oftentimes for the jokes to take on this
Speaker 1: this child's uh scatological zone. You know that. So it's
Speaker 1: gonna involve butts and maybe it's gonna involve poop. There'll
Speaker 1: be more of a tendency for poop jokes because this
Speaker 1: is something that the young folks enjoy. We can we
Speaker 1: can again think of it as kind of the rude
Speaker 1: Bart Simpson territory of of of joke craft. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and lots of lots of Dad jokes are completely clean,
Speaker 1: but they've got a special purchase on this place that
Speaker 1: we might call the edgy side of tame. Yeah. Yeah, now, Um,
Speaker 1: One of one other thing I want to touch on
Speaker 1: here is that, Um, obviously the terminology we're using here
Speaker 1: is is largely gendered, but I think I tend to
Speaker 1: reject the idea that it's distinctly gendered phenomenon we were
Speaker 1: talking about, Um, you know, it doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: especially tied to masculine ideas. And I'm willing to bet
Speaker 1: anything that their appearance of all identities out there that
Speaker 1: make what can be classified as dad jokes, oh of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously this is something that transcends dad Dum. I do
Speaker 1: think there must be some kind of observation of at
Speaker 1: least a slight trend towards these kinds of jokes among
Speaker 1: Dad's in particular, but yeah, all kinds of people tell
Speaker 1: dad jokes. In fact, the first dad joke that came
Speaker 1: to my mind, um, when when I was thinking about this,
Speaker 1: when you said you wanted to do this topic was, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a legend in my in law's family.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't a joke told by a dad, but
Speaker 1: a joke told to a dad. And it was in
Speaker 1: fact told to a dad by a daughter. It was
Speaker 1: something Rachel said to her dad when they were posing
Speaker 1: for a family photo and they were trying to get
Speaker 1: everybody to smile, and she told the joke. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard this one before, but I'll see where did George
Speaker 1: Washington keep his armies? I don't know where George Washington
Speaker 1: keep his armies in his sleevies like his And the
Speaker 1: legend goes that that My father in law like just
Speaker 1: laughed so hard at this that his head nearly exploded. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's something about a pun like that, um,
Speaker 1: which is hard. It's hard to classify what was that
Speaker 1: a really good pun or a really bad one? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because you kind of you can kind of
Speaker 1: trip over it trying to figure out what the connection is,
Speaker 1: Like you're trying to like you're visualizing it. Uh, you're
Speaker 1: you're thinking about history, and it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with any of those. It's just you know that these
Speaker 1: association between various words, It is just making a silly
Speaker 1: sound at the end of a word. Yes, that's the connection.
Speaker 1: So you kind of feel tricked by it. Uh, But
Speaker 1: you have to admire the ingenuity of the trap as well, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's I can laugh all day at this
Speaker 1: bear trap of my legs stuck in it, So I
Speaker 1: guess it's pretty good. So I would not be surprised
Speaker 1: if research were defined. I do not think such research exists.
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised to find that dads are
Speaker 1: especially prone to telling dad jokes. But it is undeniable
Speaker 1: that dad jokes transcend the dad category. Everybody tells dad jokes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree. Yeah, parents, nonparents, people of all ages,
Speaker 1: people of all genders. Um. But this seems to be
Speaker 1: a way that we are as a culture classifying them today.
Speaker 1: So I again, I was thinking about this over the weekend,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like what what it meant, And
Speaker 1: my main observation has to do with identity, importance and
Speaker 1: enthusiasm of the audience. So becoming a parent, in my
Speaker 1: opinion is is pretty much the best worst thing you
Speaker 1: can do. It's it's not for everyone and for many
Speaker 1: great reasons, but I can say from experience that it
Speaker 1: will at the very least totally change the shape of
Speaker 1: whatever your life was prior to the arrival of tiny
Speaker 1: humans or a tiny human in your life. Nothing will
Speaker 1: be the same again, including your humor. And a lot
Speaker 1: of this just have to have has to do with,
Speaker 1: like very basic realities about there being a growing human
Speaker 1: in your house. So the larval human develops, it grows,
Speaker 1: it learns, it develops language and thinking skills, and so
Speaker 1: of course it picks up on humor. It begins experimenting
Speaker 1: with its own humor. It's uh, this is a process
Speaker 1: that is at times delightful, at times arduous. Uh. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of laughter, and you help to cultivate it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, speaking of when, the sort of
Speaker 1: loose time frame from this, though it varies a bit,
Speaker 1: is babies typically start laughing between two and four months. Now.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this because there are obviously several
Speaker 1: different ways that having a child in the household will
Speaker 1: change the household's humor profile because on one hand, babies
Speaker 1: and young children are often humorous, like they can be
Speaker 1: the thing that is funny. Then at a certain point,
Speaker 1: you might say it like two to four months, they
Speaker 1: start becoming the audience for humor. They think things are funny.
Speaker 1: But then also they change essentially what people are thinking
Speaker 1: about in the household, and most humor is based on
Speaker 1: whatever is on your mind at the time, so they
Speaker 1: will also become even if it's not like referring to
Speaker 1: something they just did or reacting to something they just did,
Speaker 1: baby and child humor will sort of occupy the mind
Speaker 1: to become the subject of a lot of humor. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a lot that ends up going on there,
Speaker 1: you know. And you know it's like they say, you know,
Speaker 1: little little pictures have big ears. They pick up on
Speaker 1: so much and they end up, uh, you know, mimicking
Speaker 1: and trying to understand the humor that you're using. For instance,
Speaker 1: when you're you're talking to a non child. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really in half the time you're not even
Speaker 1: really aware of what's going on, but you're kind of
Speaker 1: all in this uh, this this complex learning process together. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it does. I feel like it does definitely
Speaker 1: change the way you you calibrate your jokes because for me,
Speaker 1: example an example, um, and I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: I'm a reasonably funny person, and uh, I enjoy it
Speaker 1: when I can genuinely make a person laugh, though, like
Speaker 1: all of us, will also settle for some polite laughter
Speaker 1: from someone else. I feel like I probably had a
Speaker 1: pretty good success rate with my humor prior to my
Speaker 1: son coming into my life, but with with him once
Speaker 1: he reached the point where he was because obviously a three,
Speaker 1: you know, super young child is not really going to
Speaker 1: be able to understand jokes. You could go up to
Speaker 1: a baby in a stroller on the street, you could
Speaker 1: tell it a joke and maybe you'll get a laugh
Speaker 1: out of him if you're making a goofy enough face.
Speaker 1: But they're not really going to pick up on the
Speaker 1: nuances of your punchline. Right If you want to make
Speaker 1: that that like two to four month old baby laugh,
Speaker 1: you're you're more in the prop comedy realm at that point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're in the peak abooth stage. So I guess that's
Speaker 1: another thing to get to keep in mind. It's like
Speaker 1: the barrier to humor starts, uh, you know, in a
Speaker 1: weird place, in a very low place. Then you work
Speaker 1: up from there. But but I would say that from
Speaker 1: the point on at which I could actually make my
Speaker 1: my son laugh, I suddenly had just an insanely good
Speaker 1: success rate with this audience of one. Um, generating laughter
Speaker 1: with almost every joke was just guaranteyed. And the big
Speaker 1: kicker was it was authentic laughter every time because he's
Speaker 1: for the longest he simply wasn't capable of faking laughter
Speaker 1: like it was. You knew that if he was laughing
Speaker 1: at a joke, he genuinely found it funny or or
Speaker 1: certainly that is that was the impression. Right. Very young
Speaker 1: children are not They haven't learned politests yet, right. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons I was reflecting on this
Speaker 1: is because I've now reach the point where the boy
Speaker 1: is perfectly capable of doing a sarcastic ha ha at
Speaker 1: my lamber jokes. Um. But I would say that period
Speaker 1: from five to seven years of age, even on up
Speaker 1: into year eight here this was probably the most fruitful
Speaker 1: comedic period of my life. And and here's the kicker,
Speaker 1: I'll never have this rate of success again. I'll never
Speaker 1: make another human being laugh this much and laugh this
Speaker 1: consistently at my humor. Well, in a way, like having
Speaker 1: spent that long trying to get laughs out of a
Speaker 1: young child, you've sort of to some degree. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you can never change Robert, but a
Speaker 1: person at this point has cemented a large part of
Speaker 1: their adult brain in that mindset, right, right, And yeah,
Speaker 1: and neurologically there are reasons you can't go back. But
Speaker 1: also it's just like, if I've been going for that
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit dad joke for so long and I've
Speaker 1: had such a great success rate with it, why would
Speaker 1: I ever give it up? You know, It's like if
Speaker 1: you're a bear and you found an incredible food cat
Speaker 1: in a prius once and now you're just gonna forever
Speaker 1: target prius is. Even though most prius is that you
Speaker 1: break into are not going to be filled with groceries,
Speaker 1: you you still broke into a prius once that had
Speaker 1: plenty of groceries, and you're never going to forget that.
Speaker 1: So even when the sarcastic ha has come with more um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna come more often. I'm probably still going to
Speaker 1: make the same jokes. And this seems to be a
Speaker 1: big part of what's going on with dad jokes. Like
Speaker 1: you go through that that period of success, and then
Speaker 1: you change, like you just got such positive rewards from
Speaker 1: this style of humor, you don't evolve beyond it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the young child is a kind of a skinner
Speaker 1: box and you're the rat inside it, and it's repeatedly
Speaker 1: rewarding you for years on end for for doing the
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit joke, and then when that doesn't work
Speaker 1: quite so well anymore, Like at that point, can you
Speaker 1: really stop? I mean you are conditioned? Ye? So um.
Speaker 1: Thinking about the sarcasm aspect of this, I I looked,
Speaker 1: I looked into this a little bit, and uh. In
Speaker 1: the literature that the idea seems to be that children
Speaker 1: begin to develop the ability to comprehend ironic utterances around
Speaker 1: five to six years of age. So it's a relatively
Speaker 1: late developing skill. Though this this varies a fair amount
Speaker 1: as far as individual kids go. And I was reading
Speaker 1: this paper from this from n by Capellia at All
Speaker 1: titled how Children understand Sarcasm, and this is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: They point out that for an adult to catch sarcasm,
Speaker 1: they depend on two different cues. There's context, and then
Speaker 1: there's the speakers uh intonation. So you know, I think
Speaker 1: we can all imagine like the context situation where I
Speaker 1: could say something that is meant to be picked up
Speaker 1: as ironic, but I could do so in a very flat,
Speaker 1: believable tone, you know. Um. And if you you were
Speaker 1: able to compare what I'm saying with the situation and
Speaker 1: and or you know me, you can you know what
Speaker 1: I'm I'm getting at. Uh um. But the study found
Speaker 1: that the children initially depend more heavily on intonation uh
Speaker 1: than on context and recognizing sarcasm. So that sarcastic voice
Speaker 1: that you use, uh, that's key for these younger children
Speaker 1: to being able to pick up on it. And I
Speaker 1: feel like I found this in my own life. If
Speaker 1: I'm going too dry with my humor, uh, it'll often
Speaker 1: like steamroll right past the boy. But if I'm making
Speaker 1: the sarcastic voice, he's he he'll get it. And if
Speaker 1: he's being sarcastic, oh boy, he will totally lean into
Speaker 1: a sarcastic voice. And I feel like I've encountered that
Speaker 1: with other kids as well, like they will really really
Speaker 1: lay it on thick. Well, I think this ties into
Speaker 1: the way that irony and sarcasms so often fail in
Speaker 1: writing in written media. You know that, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on what you call fail. But
Speaker 1: like they sometimes people fail to detect irony and sarcasm
Speaker 1: in written media. Uh. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that I was actually just reading about this a
Speaker 1: while ago, thinking that it might be worth doing an
Speaker 1: episode on the idea of ironic punctuation. You know, in
Speaker 1: in some writing conventions, there's a way of marking a
Speaker 1: sentence to say, like, I don't really mean what I'm
Speaker 1: saying in this sentence, I'm saying it for humorous effect,
Speaker 1: with like a special you know, a special like upside
Speaker 1: down exclamation point or something like that at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the sentence. And it's weird because I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that, and I was thinking, well, on one hand,
Speaker 1: that would help clear up a lot of confusion, because
Speaker 1: it just seems inevitable, especially if you're writing for an
Speaker 1: audience of multiple people, that you will at some point
Speaker 1: make a joke saying something that's the opposite of what
Speaker 1: you really think in writing, and people while they might
Speaker 1: get it if you said it out loud, will will
Speaker 1: not understand you in writing, and they'll be like, how
Speaker 1: could you say that? I don't understand you know why?
Speaker 1: And so irony punctuation would help clear that up. But
Speaker 1: I think it would also make those statements less funny,
Speaker 1: Like if you mark them as a joke at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the sentence, then is that is it actually
Speaker 1: earth making the joke? Like will most of the audience
Speaker 1: would normally laugh at it actually find it funny? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. Yeah, it's kind of like announcing I shall
Speaker 1: now make a pun before proceeding. Um. But then again,
Speaker 1: I mean some languages use this, so it you know,
Speaker 1: if it is used, it must work to some extent.
Speaker 1: I can't judge it too much. Well, writers, remember what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do. If you have a character in
Speaker 1: the third person and they're being sarcastic, you're supposed to say, um,
Speaker 1: he said sarcastically, and then the reader will know that
Speaker 1: this character is being sarcastic or she said ironically. That's
Speaker 1: just good writing and being sarcastic. Um, let's say um.
Speaker 1: Well brings me back to this paper you mentioned from.
Speaker 1: Was that the year I think it was. If this
Speaker 1: is correct, that there are two major cues that people
Speaker 1: used to detect irony or sarcasm in a statement. One
Speaker 1: is context and the other is intonation. If you're in
Speaker 1: a written context, you can't use intonation unless you have
Speaker 1: some kind of special punctuation or something like that to
Speaker 1: give a you know, a visual version of intonation. So
Speaker 1: you're down to only context. Basically you're losing half of
Speaker 1: your tool kit for detection. Yeah. And then of course
Speaker 1: in the written form, context can vanish as well. Uh so, Uh,
Speaker 1: I can see where one might lean on having some
Speaker 1: sort of strange punctuation choice that would like forever branded
Speaker 1: as ironic, course sarcastic. Yeah, it might be a good idea. Yeah, whoever,
Speaker 1: whoever is in charge of English, you know, get on that. Yes,
Speaker 1: present this to the Board of of English. So, like
Speaker 1: I said, I was thinking about this, and then I
Speaker 1: I looked around to see who else had written about it,
Speaker 1: and I found an excellent article from just back in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen in the New York Times titled A Dad
Speaker 1: Defends Dad Jokes by author and critic Jason Zinoman. And
Speaker 1: this seems like a decent person to lean on because
Speaker 1: I looked, I looked them up there about my age. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've written a book on horror films called shock Value.
Speaker 1: So I figured, you know, this might be my people,
Speaker 1: and uh and yeah, Ultimately I found that a lot
Speaker 1: of what he broke down was kind of like what
Speaker 1: I was I was thinking about, you know, with some
Speaker 1: additional layers as well. So I want to just roll
Speaker 1: through some of of his key observations from this article.
Speaker 1: So he observed that quote procreating turns men into miserable comics. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think he's you know, he's he's joking a bit there. Um,
Speaker 1: though I think we also have to stress that a
Speaker 1: lot of parents were probably not particularly funny to begin with. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not necessarily a situation where something great
Speaker 1: is lost. Um. He points to a dad joke. Only
Speaker 1: because this is this is interesting because I didn't really
Speaker 1: have a good idea of what the time frame was.
Speaker 1: I figured I didn't hear about it when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, but I didn't know exactly how old it was, uh,
Speaker 1: he said. He points out that this term only really
Speaker 1: comes into usage over the past decade and then becomes
Speaker 1: ubiquitous online in very re some years. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: I'm a comedy critic, So being a dad can seem
Speaker 1: like an occupational hazard. It may be professional suicide to admit,
Speaker 1: but since having children, I often find myself making lame
Speaker 1: puns as well as poop jokes. So this is where
Speaker 1: he brings up the poop jokes, And um, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about myself. I probably make more poop jokes now
Speaker 1: than previously because again this is the material that really
Speaker 1: zings with kids. Now, what show me the anatomy of
Speaker 1: a poop joke is? Is it just uh invoking the
Speaker 1: concept of poop? But does it need to be poop
Speaker 1: are referred to like out of its regular context? What
Speaker 1: makes a good crackling poop joke? Well, most poop jokes
Speaker 1: are not good. I find that it has to be
Speaker 1: this perfect crossover like a poop joke, that you are
Speaker 1: not too ashamed of yourself and that the child will
Speaker 1: laugh out. The child will laugh at anything up to
Speaker 1: a certain point just because it has the word poop
Speaker 1: in it, like poop is inherently funny. Um, probably in general,
Speaker 1: but especially to the children. So for from my point,
Speaker 1: it's like it can it isn't. It isn't an elequent
Speaker 1: enough poop joke that you feel okay telling it and
Speaker 1: being the teller of this joke. You know, I was
Speaker 1: asking because I was just thinking about a rather poopy
Speaker 1: concept to perhaps cover on the show in the near future.
Speaker 1: And it was it was the discovery of an ancient
Speaker 1: manuscript of a commentary on Homer that had clearly been
Speaker 1: used as toilet paper in the ancient world. And it
Speaker 1: was found that an ancient garbage dump in Egypt, but
Speaker 1: it had poop on it, And I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe, So we did the episode on the
Speaker 1: far dnomicon, so I don't think anything it's sacred anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: but maybe see that's not a joke, that's just like, well,
Speaker 1: here's an ancient document that was pooped on. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if that would fly with kids, or maybe
Speaker 1: it would. Would you say, here's a here's an ancient
Speaker 1: document and somebody wiped their butt with it. Would that
Speaker 1: be funny enough? I mean at a certain age probably yeah.
Speaker 1: But then again, are the kids going to pick up
Speaker 1: on the weight of if you're talking about like the
Speaker 1: works of Homer and stuff? So uh yeah, I'm not sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a whole probably a whole domain of humor theory
Speaker 1: just regarding poop jokes. Now, I did think that the
Speaker 1: author here has in him and really nailed it with
Speaker 1: this line. He says, quote, like so many lazy comics,
Speaker 1: we parents pander. If jokes work, then they stay set.
Speaker 1: Gradually we become hooked on cheap laughs some of us,
Speaker 1: some of us even delude ourselves into thinking we are
Speaker 1: actually funny. And he points out that once this setting
Speaker 1: is obtained, it does not evolve, but the children, of course,
Speaker 1: do evolve. And uh, yeah, this totally rings true with
Speaker 1: what I'm beginning to experience now, like uh, and it
Speaker 1: goes beyond joke telling because I think of all the
Speaker 1: various references that my wife and I make in you know,
Speaker 1: regarding things that my son once said or once observed
Speaker 1: or once did. Um, And they're almost all things that
Speaker 1: he does not say anymore, or does not do anymore,
Speaker 1: in many cases, does not remember, so he can't even
Speaker 1: pick up on the reference, you know, except has heard
Speaker 1: us talk about it. But they were like they were
Speaker 1: so near and dear to our hearts. Um. And sometimes
Speaker 1: they sum up an idea really well, at least for us. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I imagine I'm gonna probably keep making these references
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. Like, uh, for example,
Speaker 1: he used to say things like so is me instead
Speaker 1: of so am I? You know which is? It's kids.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff with kids like that, Right,
Speaker 1: they say something wrong and it's adorable, it's funny. It's
Speaker 1: at least as long as you're connected to them. Um or.
Speaker 1: Another example was he used to talk about, uh, if
Speaker 1: he was describing the temperature, he might say it was
Speaker 1: super a little bit hot, or if it was dark
Speaker 1: outside of super a little bit dark. Or he would
Speaker 1: overuse and misuse the word crazed. And so these are
Speaker 1: just a few examples of things that I can't let
Speaker 1: go and I'm probably gonna keep referencing them, even though
Speaker 1: they have no connection even to who he is right now,
Speaker 1: much less who he will become. Oh, I love super
Speaker 1: a little bit hot. That's like, uh, when when a
Speaker 1: kid at any point saying they're hungry, they're saying I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit starving. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of thing
Speaker 1: like that's that's the very sort of thing that a
Speaker 1: kid would say, and and you end up lashing onto it.
Speaker 1: Um So uh, yeah, I feel like Zenoman totally totally
Speaker 1: gets it right there, But it sounds like Zenoman is saying,
Speaker 1: and to some extent, you're also saying, the issue is that,
Speaker 1: like the child gets older in their sense of humor evolves,
Speaker 1: but the parent is inherently kind of stuck in this
Speaker 1: older mode of what has worked before. And and this
Speaker 1: mirrors other things that happened of course in like parent
Speaker 1: child relationships. Like you know, I know a lot of
Speaker 1: tension as kids get into like adolescent and teenage years,
Speaker 1: is like parents exercising a level of sort of management
Speaker 1: and protectiveness that would have been more appropriate to a
Speaker 1: child at a younger age, or so the teenager thinks.
Speaker 1: And you know, a teenager that thinks like that, you know,
Speaker 1: you are still treating me as if I'm younger and
Speaker 1: I don't and I rebel against that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think absolutely. Um there's also and there's him and
Speaker 1: gets into this a bit too. There's you know that
Speaker 1: they're there's certainly uh he discusses the mockery, the mockery thing, um,
Speaker 1: the idea that that we that dad's then continue to
Speaker 1: use dad jokes as a way to kind of, um, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, get a rise out of the child, and
Speaker 1: then the child kind of mocks them for using that humor.
Speaker 1: But he also gets into this idea that um, that
Speaker 1: it's a lot of it's tied up with with nostalgia.
Speaker 1: So first of all, there's of course the nostalgia for
Speaker 1: when your child was younger and they laughed at everything
Speaker 1: you said. Uh, and you're the funniest person on earth.
Speaker 1: But also, um, he says that that basically dad jokes
Speaker 1: give us permission to joke like children again. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just to give us permission to make these kind of
Speaker 1: you know, lame short, you know, not too not too
Speaker 1: deep jokes that are that are you know, usually pretty tame. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's I feel like it's part of that larger
Speaker 1: trend in the way that parenthood gives one permission to
Speaker 1: a point to think and dream like a child again,
Speaker 1: because you dream with them, you introduced them to the
Speaker 1: stuff that filled your childhood engage, and you yourself get
Speaker 1: to engage with all of it again. Um. Like I
Speaker 1: mean example for that with with that for me would
Speaker 1: be like Star Wars. I introduced my son to Star Wars.
Speaker 1: He got super into it, and I would say I
Speaker 1: probably got more into it than I had ever been
Speaker 1: in my life, like even more than I was when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, because I am experiencing it through him.
Speaker 1: Now I witnessed this just through you. Like you you
Speaker 1: went through a Star Wars renaissance in the past four years. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and um and it's I don't think it would have
Speaker 1: taken place without him. I mean maybe it would have.
Speaker 1: You know, people still go on these various nostalgia cycles
Speaker 1: and um, and I certainly do that with things that
Speaker 1: have no connection to my son. Um. But uh, but
Speaker 1: but but I I can definitely see how how parenthood
Speaker 1: plays into it. So so yeah, nostalgia seems to be
Speaker 1: a big point. And then he also points out the puns.
Speaker 1: One thing about puns is that puns are in and
Speaker 1: of themselves pretty great. You don't have to be a
Speaker 1: parent or a dad or what have you to really
Speaker 1: enjoy puns. Uh. Shakespeare made use of puns, and I
Speaker 1: can think of plenty of of of adults, parents and
Speaker 1: non appearance alike who go crazy for a good pun.
Speaker 1: I feel like the adult pun market, though, tends to
Speaker 1: skew more towards uh rewarding puns that violates some taboo
Speaker 1: beyond just the standard understood definition or use of a word,
Speaker 1: like a lot of adult puns are also sort of
Speaker 1: vulgar or edgy in some way. Yeah, and certainly true
Speaker 1: of a lot of Shakespeare puns. Yeah, yeah, in a
Speaker 1: way though. I think that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes things like um, where did Washington keep his h
Speaker 1: his his armies? Like? One of the reasons that works
Speaker 1: so well and it sticks with me so well, is
Speaker 1: because most uh comedy aimed at adults by adults, Uh,
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know it's gonna go for those those
Speaker 1: cheaper laughs and those edgy or laughs, and your your
Speaker 1: defenses are down for these sort of weapons. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like in um in Frank Herbert's done, where they
Speaker 1: have the self protective shields and you can't fire a
Speaker 1: bullet through it, and you can't like quickly stabbed through it.
Speaker 1: You have to go slow. It's like that's kind of
Speaker 1: how the the tame humor can be. It's like, I
Speaker 1: had my defenses were not designed for a blade this slow,
Speaker 1: and now you have stabbed me in the heart. The
Speaker 1: dad joke is in a way the weirding module. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it trains you on the slow knife combat of of
Speaker 1: pun humor. Yeah. Um. Now, another thing that the Zenoman
Speaker 1: got into that I thought was interesting was touching on
Speaker 1: when you get into this area where a dad or
Speaker 1: you know, a parent is making this dad joke, this
Speaker 1: this kind of lame joke that then it lects size
Speaker 1: and groans from everyone in the room. You're also getting
Speaker 1: into the area of of cringe comedy here, um, which
Speaker 1: which I think is is a good point. Like we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think of, say The Office as being dad
Speaker 1: jokes and dad humor, but there was a lot of
Speaker 1: that there. I mean, the character of Michael Scott, for example,
Speaker 1: engage in a lot of this making like really bad
Speaker 1: uh jokes, really lame attempts at humor and u and
Speaker 1: it was hilarious. We loved it. Well, yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of cringe comedy, like the comedy that's based in witnessing
Speaker 1: something somebody do something incredibly embarrassing and like just fail
Speaker 1: in front of an audience. It's a weird kind of
Speaker 1: mixture of humor and it's something that feels like it's
Speaker 1: simultaneously relatively wholesome and doesn't have to get into you know,
Speaker 1: like like raunchy content, but at the same time feels
Speaker 1: absolutely as dangerous as like the most raunchy blue comedy,
Speaker 1: just because it's so like painful, it's like emotionally visceral
Speaker 1: to watch embarrassment based humor. Yeah yeah, um. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of stand up when when Nyman got into this idea
Speaker 1: as well, that you know that the dad joke is
Speaker 1: generally not only haim, it's also very lean. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it doesn't take much time to tell, it's
Speaker 1: not complicated. This reminded me a lot of the stand
Speaker 1: up comedy of the late Mitch Hedberg, but also some
Speaker 1: of the I guess a lot of the comedy of
Speaker 1: Stephen Wright. Uh not to say that those uh, those
Speaker 1: two engaged in and really straightforward dad jokes, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it was very short. Um, a lot of
Speaker 1: it was ultimately very clean, uh, very silly, you know,
Speaker 1: in a in their their own way, I mean, right
Speaker 1: is was certainly very dry. Uh. But whereas like like Hedberg,
Speaker 1: I feel like he he was an interesting case because
Speaker 1: he kind of got away with it because they have
Speaker 1: this cool, stoner persona, but he's essentially in many cases
Speaker 1: just doing like kind of dad jokes. And I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's a little lunear than that. And
Speaker 1: Stephen Wright has this very extremely dry delivery and it's
Speaker 1: based uh uh you know, and it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: a weirdness. Um. But you could look at this dad
Speaker 1: jokes as being just kind of like the latest, most
Speaker 1: popular or way to categorize a kind of style of
Speaker 1: joke telling that maybe isn't, um, you know, the main
Speaker 1: fashion right now, but hasn't been more fashionable in the
Speaker 1: in the past, and is still utilized well by certain
Speaker 1: practitioners of comedy. Yeah, the self contained one liner seems
Speaker 1: important here, though I wonder if some I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I have the wrong sense about this.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a lot of like Mitch Hedberg type jokes,
Speaker 1: a lot of them seem to hinge on a kind
Speaker 1: of absurdity, which I don't know how well it translates
Speaker 1: to kids or not. I think about his joke where
Speaker 1: he says, um, rice is a great food if you
Speaker 1: ever want to eat a thousand of something. I find
Speaker 1: that funny. Is that funny to kids? Maybe? Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that particular joke, but maybe like
Speaker 1: kids have, kids are great at absurdity, Like kids are
Speaker 1: a font of absurdity. Um. I mean, that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons they can be they can be so amusing
Speaker 1: to be around. Um. So, so it was very possible.
Speaker 1: I mean that one's I mean, I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: if I could put my finger on what it is
Speaker 1: that's funny about that one. I guess it's just imagining
Speaker 1: the possibility of eating a thousand hamburgers or a thousand
Speaker 1: of anything else. Yeah, yeah, I agree, it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's absurd. Um it turns something every day on its
Speaker 1: head and makes you and like makes it weird. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's I feel like I will have to try
Speaker 1: this one on my son later and report back. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna let him watch a whole set of Mitch Hedberg,
Speaker 1: but maybe I'll bust out a few Mitch Hedburg and
Speaker 1: a little Steven Right and see see how he reacts,
Speaker 1: see which one he likes. Bet thank you? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I thought one way to to try to bring some structure,
Speaker 1: uh to this idea would be to think about theories
Speaker 1: of humor. Now, even this is is still going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit loose, because there's clearly not one
Speaker 1: agreed upon um theory that explains the role of humor
Speaker 1: in biological organisms. We we've talked about this in the past,
Speaker 1: but so there are different attempts that psychologists, UH and
Speaker 1: cognitive scientists have put forward in trying to explain why
Speaker 1: we laugh at things, like what's actually happening in the brain,
Speaker 1: what is humor in a biological sense? And UH, I
Speaker 1: think the place where most recently we went into depth
Speaker 1: on this subject was in our two part series called
Speaker 1: Flat a Sex Makina, which was about why it's funny
Speaker 1: when machines fail, where we talked about neural net generated text,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of fun We talked about like
Speaker 1: D and D characters and spells and stuff created by
Speaker 1: neural networks, but that we also talked about about like
Speaker 1: scenes where like robots fail in movies like ED two
Speaker 1: O nine in RoboCop, which is a stairs yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But so in that context we were trying to figure out, okay, well, well,
Speaker 1: how does this fit into these mainstream hypothesis is about
Speaker 1: what is going on in the body and the brain
Speaker 1: and our evolutionary history to generate this concept of humor.
Speaker 1: Why are things funny? Why does it feel funny? Why
Speaker 1: do we laugh? And so forth. And so there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of ideas on this. We're not going to
Speaker 1: get into all of them, certainly, not in depth, but
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention a few One that came up,
Speaker 1: I think from a biologist or zoologist that we were
Speaker 1: reading that time, But it was the idea of laughter
Speaker 1: as a form of play signaling. And I thought that
Speaker 1: this idea had some purchase. It was pretty interesting. So
Speaker 1: the idea here would be that laughing is actually a
Speaker 1: kind of communicative mechanism to distinguish playful aggression from genuine aggression.
Speaker 1: So if you ever watch dogs fighting, they can be
Speaker 1: making all kinds of growling sounds and knocking each other
Speaker 1: over and all that, but you can still pretty easily
Speaker 1: tell fun fighting from real fighting by the dog's posture.
Speaker 1: Like when a dog is having fun, it'll like put
Speaker 1: it's butt up in the air, in the front of
Speaker 1: its body down and wag its tail. And so they
Speaker 1: can be fighting, but you know, we know everybody's having
Speaker 1: a good time. Yeah, you can definitely tell from their
Speaker 1: body language when they're they're dead serious and when it's
Speaker 1: it's play. Yeah, And so the idea would be, well,
Speaker 1: maybe in in primates like us laughter play some kind
Speaker 1: of similar role. It is a it's a mechanism like
Speaker 1: the wagging tail, to signal mutual communication between parties that
Speaker 1: something that's going on that might be interpreted in one way,
Speaker 1: maybe in a dangerous way, is actually just to be
Speaker 1: interpreted in a humorous way, in a fun way, that
Speaker 1: everything's okay. And so it discourages misinterpretation of mock aggression.
Speaker 1: And I can certainly see something to this, because it
Speaker 1: is it is undeniable, like this this natural thing that
Speaker 1: happens that when kids like wrestle for fun or they're
Speaker 1: just playing around, it results in laughter. You know, this
Speaker 1: makes me think about tone and contact with sarcasm again,
Speaker 1: because there I've certainly had this experience where I've I've
Speaker 1: told I've made a dry joke that that is supposed
Speaker 1: to be a joke, but I did it so dryly
Speaker 1: that that my son doesn't catch it at first, and
Speaker 1: then I have to explain to him, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not serious, um you know, not that he's upset,
Speaker 1: but he's like, really, that's really gonna happen, Like he
Speaker 1: completely falls for it. And then I feel a little
Speaker 1: bit bad because my main job here is not to
Speaker 1: make jokes. It's it's to raise a child that knows
Speaker 1: how the world works or has some reasonable knowledge of
Speaker 1: how the world works. And so maybe I want I
Speaker 1: wonder this is I have nothing to back this up,
Speaker 1: but maybe parents end up leaning more on tone. They
Speaker 1: pick up on on the fact that they need that
Speaker 1: tone to understand the joke, and so you just lean
Speaker 1: into it more and more, and you keep leaning into
Speaker 1: it until you're just a complete hack. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it like that, but yeah, because
Speaker 1: tone would be so important in in establishing this kind
Speaker 1: of really ship with a kid. Yeah, Like, why does
Speaker 1: why does dad basically put clown makeup on every time
Speaker 1: he makes a joke? Well, because he feels like he
Speaker 1: needs to signal that he is not telling you how
Speaker 1: the world worked, He's just trying to make a joke
Speaker 1: about the world. I nothing to back that up, but
Speaker 1: I'm just just just you know, um brainstorming here. No,
Speaker 1: I think there's something really too that we should keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. Um. Now, on on the other hand,
Speaker 1: as we talked about the last time this came up
Speaker 1: in that Machine Comedy episode, Uh, there are obviously ways
Speaker 1: in which all of these major theories don't seem to
Speaker 1: account for some types of laughter and some types of humor,
Speaker 1: which makes me think, you know, it could very well
Speaker 1: be that multiple theories of humor could simultaneously be partially
Speaker 1: correct and explaining different types of laughter. I mean, we
Speaker 1: can't rule out that laughter could have different biological causes
Speaker 1: converging on the same external behavior, much in the same
Speaker 1: way that like multiple extremely different, you know, biological causes
Speaker 1: can result in an elevated heart rate. Maybe multiple totally
Speaker 1: different biological causes, uh that you know, have different evolutionary
Speaker 1: pathways of development could eventually converge on the same type
Speaker 1: of body response, which is the pleasure of humor in
Speaker 1: the brain and the external behavior of laughing. That that's possible.
Speaker 1: So maybe each of these explanations has some part of
Speaker 1: the truth. But the reason you would need to say
Speaker 1: that is that, like, some of these explanations don't really
Speaker 1: seem like they would cover certain types of humor, like
Speaker 1: especially play signaling. I mean, does how would that really
Speaker 1: affect something like puns? It seems kind of hard to
Speaker 1: figure that out. Ye. Now, another major explanation of what's
Speaker 1: going on when when people experience the feeling of humor
Speaker 1: is what's known as benign violation theory. One study we
Speaker 1: talked about in the past having to do with this
Speaker 1: was by Peter A. McGraw and Caleb Warren called Benign
Speaker 1: Violations Making immoral Behavior Funny, published in Psychological Science in
Speaker 1: two thousands. Him and this study looked at the idea
Speaker 1: of humor as some kind of violation of norms that
Speaker 1: is recognized by the person who finds it funny as
Speaker 1: not actually very harmful. Uh So, the example they used
Speaker 1: in their study was they they confronted people with a
Speaker 1: news story about a church that had raffled off a
Speaker 1: Hummer suv as part of a promotion for its members,
Speaker 1: for the church goers. And so the thinking here is
Speaker 1: that obviously to some people, that's going to be kind
Speaker 1: of a funny idea, right, like doing a sort of
Speaker 1: secular like car giveaway at a church would seem to
Speaker 1: in some way undermine the sanctity of the church. And
Speaker 1: they they figured under their theory, well that maybe church
Speaker 1: goers would find this story less funny because they would
Speaker 1: see this violation of the sanctity of the church as
Speaker 1: more actually harmful than non churchgoers would. And they wouldn't
Speaker 1: find it as funny if humor is indeed based on
Speaker 1: the idea of a benign violation, and that is what
Speaker 1: they claimed to find in this study. They found that
Speaker 1: churchgoers and non churchgoers were both about equally disgusted with
Speaker 1: the idea of a church giving away a car, but
Speaker 1: they found that non churchgoers found the story more humorous
Speaker 1: than churchgoers did. So I think it was like nine
Speaker 1: tent to sixty. So the idea would be that non
Speaker 1: churchgoers saw this as a benign violation, churchgoers saw it
Speaker 1: as a real harmful violation. And in that other episode,
Speaker 1: we we talked about a bunch of reasons why this
Speaker 1: might and might not work to explain certain types of humor, Like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that are clearly benign
Speaker 1: types of violations that just aren't funny. But then again,
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that are funny are some
Speaker 1: type of benign violation. You could see easily how you
Speaker 1: could make them not funny by either making them not
Speaker 1: a violation at all, or by making them such a
Speaker 1: violation that they actually hurt someone. Yeah. I in the past,
Speaker 1: I've definitely seen the nine violation theory being one that
Speaker 1: that feels feels accurate, like I can I can feel
Speaker 1: it feels like that's what's going on in various jokes.
Speaker 1: But again, I would be hesitant to to assign all
Speaker 1: humor to this one theory. Yeah, this seems to me
Speaker 1: like one that maybe sort of grasping in the right direction.
Speaker 1: But but that might not have the full contours of
Speaker 1: exactly what makes something funny or not, because there are
Speaker 1: the I mean, there are plenty of cases where things
Speaker 1: are clearly truly harmful and people still find them funny.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes even against your better judgment, like you might
Speaker 1: something might happen that is clearly harmful in one way
Speaker 1: or another, and you find it funny even though you
Speaker 1: feel like you shouldn't, and you feel bad for finding
Speaker 1: it funny. Yeah, but but sometimes they are funnier, like
Speaker 1: knowing that everyone is okay, Like I've seen that that
Speaker 1: disclaimer placed in front of the sharing of various like
Speaker 1: amusing video clips these days, where it will be stressed
Speaker 1: everybody was fine, nobody was actually killed or seriously wounded
Speaker 1: in what you're about to see. Therefore you have you
Speaker 1: have license to actually laugh at it. Now, there's another
Speaker 1: one we talked about just briefly in that other episode
Speaker 1: that was called the incongruity resolution theory, and essentially that says,
Speaker 1: when there is a mismatch between expectation and reality, you
Speaker 1: expect things to be one way, but then there's something different.
Speaker 1: Laughter occurs when we realized that this incongruity can be resolved.
Speaker 1: So that's another way of framing something that is in
Speaker 1: some ways kind of similar. But there's one last one
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about that I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: more and more since we discussed in since we talked
Speaker 1: about it in in that plate s X Market episode.
Speaker 1: And this is thinking about laughter from an evolutionary perspective.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that is really notable about
Speaker 1: laughter is it's not just an external behavior. Laughter is pleasurable.
Speaker 1: It feels good. You like specifically seek out stimuli to
Speaker 1: make yourself laugh, just in the same way you would
Speaker 1: seek out like delicious food. It feels good and you
Speaker 1: want it to keep happening. Uh. Usually, pleasure is a
Speaker 1: biological reward. The brain delivers itself pleasure in response to
Speaker 1: an activity that provides some kind of direct or indirect
Speaker 1: benefit to survival or reproduction. And these, of course you
Speaker 1: know in the case of direct benefits, you can think
Speaker 1: about the obvious stuff you know, food, food tastes good
Speaker 1: because you need it to give yourself energy and survive.
Speaker 1: Or it can be much more abstract, like socializing with
Speaker 1: others can feel really good, and that's pretty clearly explicable,
Speaker 1: and that it's the strengthening of social bonds and informing
Speaker 1: you know, tighter relationships between yourselves and other people, which
Speaker 1: which gives you more of a support structure, makes you
Speaker 1: less vulnerable. Or you could think about the sense of
Speaker 1: accomplishment you get from completing a task. So if laughter
Speaker 1: is an adaptation that provides not just an external behavior
Speaker 1: but internal pleasure reward, what is it rewarding? And one
Speaker 1: answer that I that I came across to this is
Speaker 1: that what if it's the brain rewarding itself for performing
Speaker 1: a debugging procedure? Basically uh And this was an idea
Speaker 1: explored in a two thousand eleven book from M I. T.
Speaker 1: Press called Inside Jokes by Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dinnett, and
Speaker 1: Reginald Adams Jr. And I have not read this book,
Speaker 1: but I've read some summaries of the argument they make,
Speaker 1: and essentially it is that humor is a pleasurable reward.
Speaker 1: It's the you know, the reward inside the brain that
Speaker 1: we get when we recognize the inappropriateness of a mental representation.
Speaker 1: So in this all jokes basically have some form of
Speaker 1: set up and punchline. Uh. The setup sort of puts
Speaker 1: you in a state of mind to establish an inappropriate
Speaker 1: or unrealistic mental representation, and then the punchline kind of
Speaker 1: suddenly creates that inappropriate or incongruous mental representation. And then
Speaker 1: what happens immediately after is that you suddenly figure out
Speaker 1: what's wrong with the representation that's in your brain. So
Speaker 1: in the Armies and Sleevies example, uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like you suddenly have that moment where you realize, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I see yes, armies in this is just referring to arms,
Speaker 1: and that is not how grammar works. You don't actually
Speaker 1: say ease at the end of every noun. But then
Speaker 1: the brain rewards you for going through that process of
Speaker 1: debugging the problematic representation in your brain by giving you
Speaker 1: this pleasurable feeling of humor that is in some ways
Speaker 1: analogous to the pleasure that you would get from eating
Speaker 1: delicious food or sleeping or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: this really gets my brain going because I wonder about
Speaker 1: this debugging interpretation. Obviously, you know, I think this would
Speaker 1: have its critics as well, like all of these ideas do.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if you could see evidence for this
Speaker 1: debugging inter rotation in the special kinds of humor that
Speaker 1: are especially effective with little kids but start getting groans
Speaker 1: once the kids get older. Is a young brain in
Speaker 1: a more frantic debugging phase? Is it? You know? Is
Speaker 1: the young brain more apt to make an inappropriate mental
Speaker 1: representation and then get a lot of pleasure from figuring
Speaker 1: out no, that's not how words work, or something like that,
Speaker 1: And uh? Is it? Is it? Also? Is the young
Speaker 1: brain more susceptible to bugs of this kind in the
Speaker 1: first place? You know, will will you sort of fall
Speaker 1: for the setup and punchline in a way that makes
Speaker 1: the debugging possible? No, yeah, I can I could see that.
Speaker 1: Uh that playing a role here. Yeah, you're you're When
Speaker 1: the sitcom dad wanders into the room and tells a joke,
Speaker 1: He's not just trying to get some cheap laughs. He
Speaker 1: is debugging the children's brains. He is, uh, he is
Speaker 1: helping them sort out, uh, some possible errors in their
Speaker 1: cognition by basically presenting them with with little um, a
Speaker 1: little thought puzzles, little thought experiments that they have to
Speaker 1: instantly deal with. I mean this does kind of go
Speaker 1: along with another aspect of humor, which is that humor
Speaker 1: often kind of gives you a little bit of a
Speaker 1: feeling of being smart. Have you ever noticed this, Like
Speaker 1: when when you laugh at something and something you find
Speaker 1: something very funny. In the back of your mind, there's
Speaker 1: almost kind of a little like, yeah, you're pretty smart,
Speaker 1: you're a genius. Yeah. Yeah. To to get a joke,
Speaker 1: To laugh at a joke is to sync up with
Speaker 1: the mind of the comedian that is telling it or
Speaker 1: or has written the joke. And uh, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: see that. Yeah, I can see that interpretation for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm super a little bit smart. Yeah, pretty much. Um yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I like this this interpretation. Yeah, it makes me wonder
Speaker 1: if this is this is part of it as well.
Speaker 1: But it also makes me wonder about I guess this
Speaker 1: came up a little bit earlier, but you know, can
Speaker 1: we understand how dad jokes work by looking at when
Speaker 1: they really do not work? You know that period where
Speaker 1: I guess the kid gets to adolescents or whatever, at age,
Speaker 1: whatever age it is where they start to really groan
Speaker 1: at dad's dad jokes or at anybody's dad jokes and
Speaker 1: and say, Dad, you know, like, what exactly has changed
Speaker 1: that is failing there? And does that tell us about
Speaker 1: what worked with the jokes originally? Well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: we were to roughly compare it to say, a child
Speaker 1: getting ready to leave the house at a younger age,
Speaker 1: they need a lot of help and reminding and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of nagging to get to get
Speaker 1: it done. Are your pants on? Are you wearing the
Speaker 1: right shirt? Is it buttoned up properly? Let me see
Speaker 1: your hair? Um? And as they get older there, you know,
Speaker 1: ideally they're they're doing more and more of this themselves,
Speaker 1: and they might take a front at you, uh, interjecting
Speaker 1: yourself and saying I think you need to rebutton that
Speaker 1: shirt or I'm not sure that that hair looks completely etcetera.
Speaker 1: So maybe something similar is going on with the the
Speaker 1: debugging of their brain with puns and bad jokes. Is
Speaker 1: that you're saying, uh, let me see that brain of
Speaker 1: yours for a second, I'm not sure I got all
Speaker 1: the bugs and they're like, Dad, I got you got
Speaker 1: all the bugs. There are no bugs left, but maybe
Speaker 1: there are. You know, that's why you keep at it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking about another interpretation of uh. What
Speaker 1: could be a possible reason that parents keep telling grown
Speaker 1: inducing jokes as their kids get older and start being like,
Speaker 1: awful mom, dad, don't talk. You know that that's that's
Speaker 1: the worst? Is that A lot of times what can
Speaker 1: be frustrating. I think about interacting with somebody who's like
Speaker 1: a teenager is like sort of low affect in in
Speaker 1: many different directions, you know, just kind of like inability
Speaker 1: to give much of a response in any direction, and
Speaker 1: so getting a very very clear, gross kind of emotional
Speaker 1: response in the form of a groan at a really
Speaker 1: really painful pun in a way that is a big reaction, right,
Speaker 1: you know, at a time when maybe a lot of
Speaker 1: it's are just like not reacting enough. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense, you know it totally does?
Speaker 1: You know, Like there's this uh and I don't I
Speaker 1: only have limited experience with with like the junior high
Speaker 1: and teenager set, but but you know, from from interacting
Speaker 1: with with niece and nephew, Uh, yeah, they're at times
Speaker 1: there can be that feeling of like all right there
Speaker 1: in their own own little world, you know, either uh,
Speaker 1: you know, completely absorbed by their their phone and what
Speaker 1: have you. Uh So, maybe you're not gonna get a
Speaker 1: laughter laughter out of them. But if you can get
Speaker 1: that grown, if you can get their eyes to roll,
Speaker 1: at least they're listening to you, you know, at least
Speaker 1: you've made some connection. And it probably ties back into
Speaker 1: you can make an easy analogy to stand up comedy,
Speaker 1: right like you, I guess you ideally, if you can't
Speaker 1: be the comedian who's just getting you know, an uproar
Speaker 1: of laughter, at least if you could get the the opposite,
Speaker 1: that would be something. If you could get like the
Speaker 1: Andy Kaufman um kind of response right where you're just
Speaker 1: enraging the audience and you know, and you're making them
Speaker 1: feel something. You're still working with comedy, but you're you're
Speaker 1: going after a different emotional response. It comes back to
Speaker 1: the idea that that perhaps dad jokes are just a
Speaker 1: one way of thinking about a particular type of humor,
Speaker 1: that that is, um is desirable in and of itself,
Speaker 1: outside of any kind of uh, parental context. And you know,
Speaker 1: just as this this, you know, used to be more
Speaker 1: popular as a mainstream form of comedy. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's still going to find an audience today again,
Speaker 1: in part perhaps because your your guard is down to
Speaker 1: that that slow moving comedic knife. I was just trying
Speaker 1: to look up the name of the martial art that
Speaker 1: you do with the knives in Dune. I don't think
Speaker 1: it has a name, but they're the Chris knives in Dune. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to past the Holtzman shields. Yeah, this is just the
Speaker 1: way you try and stab somebody with the Holtzman shield
Speaker 1: But I had forgotten about this detail as well. Apparently
Speaker 1: you can't use lace guns or Holtzman shields on Iracus
Speaker 1: because the energy field created by them attracts sandworms. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's that's right. I still need a part of
Speaker 1: me wants to reread the first book again, and now
Speaker 1: I have more time in anticipation of the of the
Speaker 1: movie when it comes out this fall. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm trying to decide on that, or maybe
Speaker 1: I should read it to the Boy. I can't decide.
Speaker 1: When is the Boy enough for Dune? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like there because there's a lot of heady stuff in there,
Speaker 1: but there's also a basic adventure story, you know, about
Speaker 1: a young person coming up in the world. Um, there
Speaker 1: is a lot of brutal violence and treachery, true, but
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately you find that in every everything. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of kids literature that has
Speaker 1: a lot of betrayal and violence in it. Okay, what
Speaker 1: we need is like an age chart that maps response
Speaker 1: to dad jokes with with a receptivity to dune and
Speaker 1: like where that coincides. All right, but before we close that,
Speaker 1: I do want to mention one cool dad joke, if
Speaker 1: that is even a thing that sounds like an more
Speaker 1: on perhaps, but this was provided by Andrew Bourgeon in
Speaker 1: that twenty nineteen article in The Washington I and uh,
Speaker 1: this is out it goes. When does a bad joke
Speaker 1: become a dad joke when it's a parent A very
Speaker 1: nice All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close this
Speaker 1: one out, But obviously we'd love to hear from everybody
Speaker 1: out there. What what is your experience with the so
Speaker 1: called dad joke? Um, you know, what's what's your take
Speaker 1: on it? Your experience with it on the receiving end
Speaker 1: on the giving end. Um, we loved, we loved for
Speaker 1: everyone to chime in on this, so uh, do let
Speaker 1: us know in the meantime if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, including
Speaker 1: those that we referenced earlier about humor and teasing and
Speaker 1: so forth, you can find them wherever you get your podcast,
Speaker 1: even the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We've
Speaker 1: got core episodes on science and culture that come out
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we have a listener mail.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday's we usually have an artifact unless it's been
Speaker 1: preempted by something. And on Friday's that's when we do
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema, where we leave most of the science
Speaker 1: on the shelf instead focus on some sort of a
Speaker 1: weird picture. Uh. And then we have a volt episode
Speaker 1: on the weekend that's a rerun. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to suggest topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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