Speaker 1: Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: it's Saturday. Time to Revolt. Episode. This one originally aired
Speaker 1: on March and it is called the Dad Joke. It's
Speaker 1: about dad jokes. Uh. I almost tried to see if
Speaker 1: I could improvise a dad joke. But they can't be improvised,
Speaker 1: can they? They were? They require meticulous planning. That's that's right.
Speaker 1: There's a certain certain art to them. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's dive right in Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking dad jokes. Now, Robert, how did we end up here? So?
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about it over the weekend. Basically,
Speaker 1: I is, um, I you know, dad jokes are, I
Speaker 1: think a familiar concept for most of us. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't remember being a named thing when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: but at some point in my pre parenthood life it
Speaker 1: became a thing, and even non dad's would get called
Speaker 1: out for dad jokes at times. And uh. Now as
Speaker 1: a as a parent, it's it's like a frequent call out,
Speaker 1: you know, not only in this house, but but I
Speaker 1: I hear it with with my friends who are who
Speaker 1: are parents, uh, and also among again friends who are
Speaker 1: not parents. It's often a critique of someone else's joke,
Speaker 1: often from a child or from a spouse, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a self commentary on one's own joke. And I
Speaker 1: guess I hadn't thought too much about it. I didn't like,
Speaker 1: I wasn't too self reflective on the concept until until
Speaker 1: very recently. My my son is is eight going on nine,
Speaker 1: and he's definitely at the point where he is capable
Speaker 1: of sarcastic laughter for particularly punny jokes, particularly you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of like uh perhaps too lame of an
Speaker 1: attempted humor. He is liable to respond with sarcasm. And
Speaker 1: while he won't say, oh, that's a dad joke, like,
Speaker 1: clearly we are in dad joke territory. And so I
Speaker 1: just started pondering, like, what does this mean? What is
Speaker 1: the dad joke? Is the dad joke a thing? Uh?
Speaker 1: And if it is, like, how might we um quantify it?
Speaker 1: And what does it reveal about things like childhood development
Speaker 1: or humor itself. So in your experience, what is the
Speaker 1: age where where the child stops rewarding you for criminally
Speaker 1: weak puns and and starts punishing you for them. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess we're kind of in that territory right now. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not I still get get lots of laughs. I'm
Speaker 1: still pretty good. I know my audience pretty well. But
Speaker 1: I'm I'm rolling out more and more jokes that that
Speaker 1: he is liable to either half laugh at or enjoy
Speaker 1: the awfulness of the pun. Uh. And part of that,
Speaker 1: I guess is him picking up on my delivery as well. Like,
Speaker 1: if I know that it's a particularly lame joke, I'm
Speaker 1: probably 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 embarrassed their teenage or adolescent
Speaker 1: kids by telling grown worthy jokes and then get punished
Speaker 1: with the dead Yeah. You know, this actually came up
Speaker 1: in one of the sources I ended up looking at
Speaker 1: for this because because after I was thinking about it,
Speaker 1: I was like, surely I'm not the only one contemplating this,
Speaker 1: and I'm certainly not. But I looked at this one article, UM,
Speaker 1: this one post title please stop calling My humor dad
Speaker 1: Jokes by Andrew Bourgeon. 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 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 responsible one in the family,
Speaker 1: and the dad got to be the goofball, you know,
Speaker 1: the Homer Simpson right, right, Uh. So I mean not
Speaker 1: to say there wasn't truth to the trope, but it's
Speaker 1: probably a situation too where having this trope so readily
Speaker 1: occur in our sitcom culture, it kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: echoes back on us. You know, it reverberates back on
Speaker 1: the culture itself, and we lean into it even more,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So I assume at this point most
Speaker 1: people are familiar with what a dad joke is, But
Speaker 1: then again, I don't know. I often feel disconnected from
Speaker 1: terms that people use in this internet age, especially since
Speaker 1: I'm like trying not to look at the social media's
Speaker 1: and all that. Uh. 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 punch line,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out how to the best phrase.
Speaker 1: I feel like the punch line hits like a crashing
Speaker 1: clown car, and your intended audience, like the ideal audience
Speaker 1: that is actually going to laugh at this joke. Is
Speaker 1: five to seven year olds. You know they're abouts um,
Speaker 1: but that is in this is key regardless of the
Speaker 1: current age ages of those presents. So you might be
Speaker 1: in the you might be in the room with say
Speaker 1: a forty something and a teenager, but you're still firing
Speaker 1: out jokes like you have a whole room full of
Speaker 1: five to seven year olds. Now, you mentioned that these
Speaker 1: jokes are often puns and that they're often family friendly.
Speaker 1: Of course, dad jokes do tend towards very much like uh,
Speaker 1: simple word play and what might be called clean comedy.
Speaker 1: But another tendency I've noticed in dad jokes is, I
Speaker 1: don't even know what you'd call this, the tendency to
Speaker 1: make a joke that is uh, that is edgy to
Speaker 1: a really tame extent. And so this might involve, say,
Speaker 1: references to people's butts or extremely minor crude language. So
Speaker 1: one example cited in a New York Times article that
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, uh, the author mentions the
Speaker 1: joke what has two butts and kills people an assassin?
Speaker 1: H Okay, yeah, that it added a little edgy for
Speaker 1: the for the young crowd. But but I mean not
Speaker 1: to me, that's very much in the in what is
Speaker 1: understood to be the dad joke zone, because it is
Speaker 1: a joke that simultaneously violate some kind of taboo with
Speaker 1: the use of the word ass, but it is an
Speaker 1: extremely minor taboo. Yeah, I mean, for instance, Bart Simpson
Speaker 1: would love that joke. Uh. So it's it is, it
Speaker 1: is aimed appropriately. And yeah, there there is this tendency
Speaker 1: oftentimes for the jokes to take on this this child's
Speaker 1: uh scatological zone, you know that. So it's gonna involve butts,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's gonna involve poop. There'll be more of
Speaker 1: a tendency for poop jokes because this is something that
Speaker 1: the young folks enjoy. We can we can again think
Speaker 1: of it as kind of the rude Bart Simpson territory
Speaker 1: of of of joke craft. Yeah, and and lots of
Speaker 1: lots of dad jokes are completely clean, but they've got
Speaker 1: a special purchase on this place that we might call
Speaker 1: the edgy side of tame. Yeah. Yeah. Now, um, one
Speaker 1: of one other thing I want to touch on here
Speaker 1: is that, um, obviously the terminology we're using here is
Speaker 1: is largely gendered. But I think I tend to reject
Speaker 1: the idea that it's distinctly injured phenomenon we were talking about, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't seem to be especially tied to
Speaker 1: masculine ideas. And I'm willing to bet anything that their
Speaker 1: parents of all identities out there that make what can
Speaker 1: be classified as dad jokes. Oh, of course, obviously this
Speaker 1: is something that transcends dad dumb. I do think there
Speaker 1: must be some kind of observation of at least a
Speaker 1: slight trend toward these kinds of jokes among dad's in particular,
Speaker 1: but yeah, all kinds of people tell dad jokes. In fact,
Speaker 1: the first dad joke that came to my mind, um,
Speaker 1: when when I was thinking about this, when you said
Speaker 1: you wanted to do this topic, was it's it's now
Speaker 1: a legend in my in law's family. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: a joke told by a dad, but a joke told
Speaker 1: to a dad, And it was in fact told to
Speaker 1: a dad by a daughter. It was something Rachel said
Speaker 1: to her dad when they were posing for a family
Speaker 1: photo and they were trying to get everybody to smile,
Speaker 1: and she told the joke. You've probably heard this one before,
Speaker 1: but I'll see where did George Washington keep his armies?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Wheed George Washington keep his armies in
Speaker 1: his sleevies? Like, and the legend goes that that my
Speaker 1: father in law like just laughed so hard at this
Speaker 1: that his head nearly exploded. Yeah. I mean there's something
Speaker 1: about a pun like that, um, which is hard. It's
Speaker 1: hard to classify what was that a really good pun
Speaker 1: or a really bad one? Uh, you know, because you
Speaker 1: kind of you can kind of trip over it trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what the connection is, Like you're trying
Speaker 1: to like you're visualizing it. Um, You're you're thinking about history,
Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do with any of those.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, these association between various words. It
Speaker 1: is just making a silly sound at the end of
Speaker 1: a word. Yes, that's the connection. So you kind of
Speaker 1: feel tricked by it. Uh, But you have to admire
Speaker 1: the ingenuity of the trap as well. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's I can laugh all day at this bear trap,
Speaker 1: but my legs stuck in it, So I guess it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. So I would not be surprised if research
Speaker 1: were defined. I do not think such research exists. I
Speaker 1: would not be surprised to find that dad are especially
Speaker 1: prone to telling dad jokes. But it is undeniable that
Speaker 1: 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 again I was thinking about this over the weekend,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like what what it meant, and uh,
Speaker 1: my main observation has to do with identity, importance, and
Speaker 1: enthusiasm of the audience. So becoming a parent, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is is pretty much the best worst thing you can do.
Speaker 1: It's it's not for everyone and for many great reasons,
Speaker 1: but I can say from experience that it will at
Speaker 1: the very least totally change the shape of whatever your
Speaker 1: life was prior to the arrival of tiny humans or
Speaker 1: a tiny human in your life. Nothing will be the
Speaker 1: same again, including your humor. And a lot of this
Speaker 1: just have to have has to do with like very
Speaker 1: basic realities about there being a growing human in your house.
Speaker 1: So the larval human develops, it grows, it learns, it
Speaker 1: develops language and thinking skills, and so of course it
Speaker 1: picks up on humor, it begins experimenting with its own humor.
Speaker 1: It's uh, this is a process that is at times delightful,
Speaker 1: at times arduous, but there's a lot of laughter and
Speaker 1: you help to cultivate it. And by the way, speaking
Speaker 1: of when, the sort of loose time frame from this,
Speaker 1: though it varies a bit, is babies typically start laughing
Speaker 1: between two and four months. Now. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this because there are obviously several different ways that having
Speaker 1: a child in the household will change the households humor profile.
Speaker 1: Because on one hand, babies and young children are often humorous,
Speaker 1: like they can be the thing that is funny. Then
Speaker 1: at a certain point, you might say it like two
Speaker 1: to four months, they start becoming the audience for humor.
Speaker 1: They think things are funny. But then also they change
Speaker 1: essentially what people are thinking about in the household, and
Speaker 1: most humor is based on whatever is on your mind
Speaker 1: at the time, so they will also become even if
Speaker 1: it's not like referring to something they just did or
Speaker 1: reacting to something they just did, baby and child humor
Speaker 1: will sort of occupy the mind to become the subject
Speaker 1: of a lot of humor. Yeah, yeah, there's there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot that ends up going on there, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know it's like they say, you know, a
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, example,
Speaker 1: an example, um and I'd like to think that I'm
Speaker 1: a reasonably funny person and I enjoy it when I
Speaker 1: can genuinely make a person laugh, though like all of us,
Speaker 1: I'll also settle for some polite laughter from someone else.
Speaker 1: I feel like I probably had a pretty good success
Speaker 1: rate with my humor prior to my son coming into
Speaker 1: my life, but with with him once he reached the
Speaker 1: point where he was because obviously a three, you know,
Speaker 1: super young child is not really going to be able
Speaker 1: to understand jokes. You could go up to a baby
Speaker 1: in a scroller on the street. You could tell it
Speaker 1: a joke and maybe you'll get a laugh out of
Speaker 1: him if you're making a goofy enough face. But they're
Speaker 1: not really going to pick up on the nuances of
Speaker 1: your punchline. Right, If you want to make that that
Speaker 1: like two to four month old baby laugh, you're you're
Speaker 1: more in the prop comedy realm at that point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're in the peak a booth stage. So that's another
Speaker 1: thing to get to keep in mind. It's like the
Speaker 1: barrier to humor starts, uh, you know, in a weird place,
Speaker 1: in a very low place. Then you work up from there.
Speaker 1: But but I would say that from the point on
Speaker 1: at which I could actually make my my son laugh,
Speaker 1: I suddenly had just an insanely good success rate with
Speaker 1: this audience of one um. Generating laughter with almost every
Speaker 1: joke was just guaranteed. And the big kicker was it
Speaker 1: was authentic laughter every time. Because he's for the longest
Speaker 1: he simply wasn't capable of faking laughter like it was.
Speaker 1: You knew that if he was laughing at a joke,
Speaker 1: he genuinely found it funny or or certainly that is
Speaker 1: that was the impression. Very young children are not. They
Speaker 1: haven't learned politests yet, right. Um. But one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I was reflecting on this is because I've now
Speaker 1: reached the point where the boy is perfectly capable of
Speaker 1: doing a sarcastic ha ha at my lambur jokes. Um.
Speaker 1: But I would say that period from five to seven
Speaker 1: years of age, uh, even on up into year eight here,
Speaker 1: this was probably the most fruitful comedic period of my life.
Speaker 1: And and here's the kicker, I'll never have this rate
Speaker 1: of success again. I'll never make another human being laugh
Speaker 1: this much and laugh this consistently at my humor. Well,
Speaker 1: in a way, like having spent that long trying to
Speaker 1: get laughs out of a young child, you've sort of
Speaker 1: to some degree. I mean, I'm not saying you can
Speaker 1: never change Robert, but a person at this point has
Speaker 1: cemented a large part of their adult brain in that mindset,
Speaker 1: right right, And yeah, and neurologically there are reasons you
Speaker 1: can't go back. But also it's just like, if I've
Speaker 1: been going for that low hanging fruit dad joke for
Speaker 1: so long and I've had such a great success rate
Speaker 1: with it, why would I ever give it up? You know?
Speaker 1: It's like if you're a bear and you found an
Speaker 1: incredible food cash in a prius once, and now you're
Speaker 1: just gonna forever target prius is even though most prius
Speaker 1: is that you break into are not going to be
Speaker 1: filled with groceries. You you still broke into a prius
Speaker 1: once that had plenty of groceries, and you're never going
Speaker 1: to forget that. So even when the sarcastic ha has
Speaker 1: come with more, um, you're gonna come more often. I'm
Speaker 1: probably still going to make the same jokes. And this
Speaker 1: seems to be a big part of what's going on
Speaker 1: with Dad jokes. Like you go through that that period
Speaker 1: of success and then you change, like you just got
Speaker 1: such positive rewards from this style of humor, you don't
Speaker 1: evolve beyond it. Yeah, the the Young Child is a
Speaker 1: kind of a skinner box and you're the rat inside it,
Speaker 1: and it's repeatedly rewarding you for years on end for
Speaker 1: for doing the low hanging fruit joke. And then when
Speaker 1: that doesn't work quite so well anymore, Like at that point,
Speaker 1: can you really stop? I mean you are conditioned? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um. Thinking about the sarcasm aspect of this, I
Speaker 1: I looked I looked into this a little bit, and
Speaker 1: uh in the literature that the idea seems to be
Speaker 1: that children begin to develop the ability to comprehend ironic
Speaker 1: utterances around five to six years of age, so it's
Speaker 1: a relatively late developing skill. Though this this varies a
Speaker 1: fair amount as far as individual kids go. And I
Speaker 1: was reading this paper from this from n by Capelli
Speaker 1: at All titled how Children Understand Sarcasm, and this is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. They point out that for an adult to
Speaker 1: catch sarcasm, they depend on two different cues. There's context
Speaker 1: and then there's the speakers uh intonation. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think we can all imagine like the context situation
Speaker 1: where I could say something that is meant to be
Speaker 1: picked up as ironic, but I could do so in
Speaker 1: a very flat, believable tone, you know, um. And if
Speaker 1: you you were able to compare what I'm saying with
Speaker 1: the situation and and or you know me, you can
Speaker 1: you know what I'm I'm getting at um. But the
Speaker 1: study found that the children initially depend more heavily on
Speaker 1: intonation uh than on context and recognizing sarcasm. So that
Speaker 1: sarcastic uh voice that you use, uh, that's key for
Speaker 1: these younger children to being able to pick up on it.
Speaker 1: And I feel like I found this in my own life.
Speaker 1: If I'm going too dry with my humor, uh, it'll
Speaker 1: often like steamroll right past 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 sarcasm 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: worth making the joke? Like will most of the audience
Speaker 1: who would normally laugh at it actually find it funny?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yeah, it's kind of like announcing I
Speaker 1: shall 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 in there being sarc plastic, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to say, um, he said sarcastically, and then the reader
Speaker 1: will know that this character is being sarcastic or she
Speaker 1: said ironically. That's just good writing and being sarcastic. Um,
Speaker 1: let's say um. Well, brings me back to this paper
Speaker 1: you mentioned from. Was that the year I think it was.
Speaker 1: If this is correct, that there are two major cues
Speaker 1: that people use to detect irony or sarcasm in a statement.
Speaker 1: One is context and the other is intonation. If you're
Speaker 1: in a written context, you can't use intonation unless you
Speaker 1: have some kind of special punctuation or something like that
Speaker 1: to give a you know, a visual version of intonation.
Speaker 1: So you're down to only context. Basically you're losing half
Speaker 1: of 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 brand
Speaker 1: it as ironic or sarcastic. Yeah, it might be a
Speaker 1: good idea. Yeah, whoever, whoever is in charge of English,
Speaker 1: you know, get on that. Yes, present this to the
Speaker 1: Board of of English. Than So, like I said, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this, and then I I looked around
Speaker 1: to see who else had written about it, and I
Speaker 1: found an excellent article from just back in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: in the New York Times titled A Dad Defends Dad
Speaker 1: Jokes by author and critic Jason Zenoman. And this seemed
Speaker 1: like a decent person to lean on because I looked.
Speaker 1: I looked them up there about my age. Uh, they've
Speaker 1: written a book on horror films called shock Value. So
Speaker 1: I figured, you know, this might be my people, and
Speaker 1: uh and yeah, Ultimately I found that a lot of
Speaker 1: what he broke down was kind of like what I
Speaker 1: was I was thinking about, you know, with some additional
Speaker 1: layers as well. So I want to just roll through
Speaker 1: some of of his key observations from this article. So
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: with uh. So it's it's not necessarily a situation where
Speaker 1: something great is lost. Um. He points to a dad
Speaker 1: joke only because this is this is interesting because I
Speaker 1: didn't really have a good idea 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 recent years. He writes, quote, I'm
Speaker 1: a comedy critic, so being a dad can seem like
Speaker 1: 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: zeems 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 eloquent
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 scient 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 Pardonomicon,
Speaker 1: so I don't think anything it's sacred anymore. Um, but
Speaker 1: 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 him and really nailed it with this line.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, like so many lazy comics, we parents pander.
Speaker 1: If jokes work, then they stay set. Gradually we become
Speaker 1: hooked on cheap laughs. Some of some of us even
Speaker 1: delude ourselves into thinking we are actually funny. And he
Speaker 1: points out that once this setting is obtained, it does
Speaker 1: not evolve, but the children, of course do evolve. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, this totally rings true with what I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to experience now, Like, uh, and it goes beyond joke
Speaker 1: telling because I think of all the various references that
Speaker 1: my wife and I make in you know, regarding things
Speaker 1: that my son once said or once observed or once did. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're almost all things that he does not say
Speaker 1: anymore or does not do anymore, in many cases does
Speaker 1: not remember, so he can't even pick up on the reference.
Speaker 1: And you know, except he's heard us talk about it.
Speaker 1: But they were like they were so near and dear
Speaker 1: to our hearts um. And sometimes they sum up an
Speaker 1: idea really well, at least for us. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: imagine I'm gonna probably keep making these references for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life, like uh. For example, he used
Speaker 1: to say things like so is me instead of so
Speaker 1: am I? You know which is it's kids. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff with kids like that, Right, they say
Speaker 1: something wrong and it's adorable. It's anny is at least
Speaker 1: as long as you're connected to them. Um. Or Another
Speaker 1: example was he used to talk about uh if he
Speaker 1: was describing the temperature, he might say it was super
Speaker 1: a little bit hot, or if it was dark outside
Speaker 1: of super a little bit dark. Or he would overuse
Speaker 1: and misuse the word crazed. And so these are just
Speaker 1: a few examples of things that I can't let go
Speaker 1: and I'm probably gonna keep referencing them even though they
Speaker 1: 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 ended 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 Zenomon 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 the
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, the 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 anything gets
Speaker 1: into this a bit too. There's you know, they're there's
Speaker 1: 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 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 and you yourself
Speaker 1: get to engage with all of it again. Um. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean example for that with with that for me
Speaker 1: would be like Star Wars. I introduced my son to
Speaker 1: Star Wars. He got super into it, and I would
Speaker 1: say I probably got more into it than I had
Speaker 1: ever been in my life, Like even more than I
Speaker 1: was when I was a kid, because I am experiencing
Speaker 1: it through him. Now I witnessed this just through you,
Speaker 1: like you you went through a Star Wars renaissance in
Speaker 1: the past four years. Yeah, yeah, And um and it's
Speaker 1: I don't think it would have taken place without him.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe it would have. You know, people still
Speaker 1: go on these various nostalgia cycles and um, and I
Speaker 1: certainly do that with things that have no connection to
Speaker 1: my son. Um but uh, but but but I can
Speaker 1: definitely see how how parents it plays into it. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, nostalgis seems to be a big point. And
Speaker 1: then he also points out the puns one thing about puns, though,
Speaker 1: is that puns are in and of themselves pretty great.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a parent or a dad
Speaker 1: or what have you to really enjoy puns. Uh. Shakespeare
Speaker 1: made use of puns, and I can think of plenty
Speaker 1: of of of adults, parents and non appearance alike who
Speaker 1: go crazy for a good pun. I feel like the
Speaker 1: adult pun market, though, tends to skew more towards uh,
Speaker 1: rewarding puns that violate some taboo beyond just the standard
Speaker 1: understood definition or use of a word. Like a lot
Speaker 1: of adult puns are also sort of vulgar or edgy
Speaker 1: in some way. Yeah, and certainly true of a lot
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare puns. Yeah, yeah, in a way. Though. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things that makes things like um,
Speaker 1: where did Washington keep his h his his armies? Like?
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that works so well and it
Speaker 1: sticks with me so well, is because most comedy aimed
Speaker 1: at adults by adults, Uh, Isn't you know it's gonna
Speaker 1: go for those those cheaper laughs and those edgy or laughs,
Speaker 1: and so your your defenses are down for these sort
Speaker 1: of weapons. It's kind of like in um in frank
Speaker 1: Herbert's doone where they have the self protective shields and
Speaker 1: you can't fire a bullet through it, and you can't
Speaker 1: like quickly stabbed through it. You have to go slow.
Speaker 1: It's like that's kind of how the the tame humor
Speaker 1: can be. It's like, I had my defenses were not
Speaker 1: designed for a blade this slow, and now you have
Speaker 1: stabbed me in the heart. The dad joke is in
Speaker 1: a way the weirding module. It trains you on the
Speaker 1: slow knife combat of of pun humor. Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: another thing that the Zoman got into that I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting was touching on when you get into this
Speaker 1: area where a dad or you know, a parent is
Speaker 1: making this dad joke, this this kind of lame joke
Speaker 1: that then it lects size and groans from everyone in
Speaker 1: the room. You're also getting into the area of of
Speaker 1: cringe comedy here, um, which which I think is a
Speaker 1: is a good point, Like we don't necessarily think of,
Speaker 1: say the Office as being dad jokes and dad humor,
Speaker 1: but there was a lot of that there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the character of Michael Scott, for example, engaged in a
Speaker 1: lot of this making like really bad of jokes, really
Speaker 1: lame attempts at humor and u and it was hilarious.
Speaker 1: We loved it. Well, yeah, that kind of cringe comedy,
Speaker 1: like the comedy that's based in witnessing something somebody do
Speaker 1: something incredibly embarrassing and like just fail in front of
Speaker 1: an audience. It's a weird kind of mixture of humor,
Speaker 1: and it's something that feels like it's simultaneously relatively wholesome
Speaker 1: and doesn't have to get into you know, like like
Speaker 1: raunchy content, but at the same time feels absolutely as
Speaker 1: dangerous as like the most raunchy blue comedy, just because
Speaker 1: it's so like painful. It's like emotionally visceral to watch
Speaker 1: embarrassment based humor. Yeah, yeah, um. Now, speaking of stand
Speaker 1: up when when Zannaman got into this idea as well
Speaker 1: that you know that the dad joke is generally not
Speaker 1: only tame, it's also very lean, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it doesn't take much time to tell, it's not complicated.
Speaker 1: This reminded me a lot of the stand up comedy
Speaker 1: of the late Mitch Hedberg, but also some of the
Speaker 1: I guess a lot of the comedy of Stephen Wright.
Speaker 1: Not to say that those uh, those two engaged in
Speaker 1: and really straightforward dad jokes, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: was very short, um, A lot of it was ultimately
Speaker 1: very clean, uh, very silly, you know, in a in
Speaker 1: their their own way, I mean, right, is certainly very dry. Uh.
Speaker 1: But whereas like like Hedberg, I feel like he was
Speaker 1: an interesting case because he kind of got away with
Speaker 1: it because they have this cool, stoner persona, but he's
Speaker 1: essentially in many cases just doing like kind of dad
Speaker 1: jokes and I guess, you know, sometimes it's a little
Speaker 1: lunear than that. And Stephen Wright has this very extremely
Speaker 1: dry delivery and it's based uh uh you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of a weirdness. Um. But you could
Speaker 1: look at this dad jokes as being just kind of
Speaker 1: like the latest most popular way to categorize a kind
Speaker 1: of style of joke telling that maybe isn't um, you know,
Speaker 1: the main fashion right now, but hasn't been more fashionable
Speaker 1: in the in the past, and is still utilized well
Speaker 1: by certain practitioners of comedy. Yeah, the self contained one
Speaker 1: liner seems important here, though I wonder if some I mean,
Speaker 1: I 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 very possible. I mean
Speaker 1: that one's I mean, I'm not even sure if I
Speaker 1: could put my finger on what it is that's funny
Speaker 1: about that one. I guess it's just imagining the possibility
Speaker 1: of eating a thousand hamburgers or a thousand of anything else. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, It's just it's it's absurd. Um. It turns
Speaker 1: something every day on its head and makes you and
Speaker 1: like makes it weird. Uh. So that's I feel like
Speaker 1: a I will have to try this one on my
Speaker 1: son later and report back. I'm not gonna let him
Speaker 1: watch a whole set of Mitch Hedberg. But maybe I'll
Speaker 1: bust out a few Mitch Hedberg and a little Steven
Speaker 1: Right and see see how he reacts, see which one
Speaker 1: he likes. Bet Thank Okay, Well, I thought one way
Speaker 1: to to try to bring some structure UH to this
Speaker 1: idea would be to think about theories of humor. Now,
Speaker 1: even this is is still going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit loose, because there's clearly not one agreed upon um
Speaker 1: theory that explains the role of humor in biological organisms.
Speaker 1: We we've talked about this in the past, but so
Speaker 1: there are different attempts that psychologists UH and cognitive scientists
Speaker 1: have put forward in trying to explain why we laugh
Speaker 1: at things like what's actually happening in the brain, what
Speaker 1: is humor in a biological sense? And UH, I think
Speaker 1: the place where most recently we went into depth on
Speaker 1: this subject was in our two part series called Flat
Speaker 1: a Sex Makina, which was about why it's funny when
Speaker 1: 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 down the 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 hypotheses about what
Speaker 1: is going on in the body and the brain and
Speaker 1: our evolutionary history to generate this concept of humor? Why
Speaker 1: are things funny? Why does it feel funny? Why do
Speaker 1: we laugh? And so forth? And so there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of ideas on this. We're not going to get
Speaker 1: into all of them, certainly, not in depth, but I
Speaker 1: 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, so it was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: So the idea here would be that laughing is actually
Speaker 1: a kind of communicative mechanism to distinguish playful aggression from
Speaker 1: genuine aggression. So if you ever watch dogs fighting, they
Speaker 1: can be making all kinds of growling sounds and knocking
Speaker 1: each other over and all that. But you can still
Speaker 1: pretty easily tell fun fighting from real fighting by the
Speaker 1: dog's posture. Like when a dog is having fun, it'll
Speaker 1: like put its butt up in the air in the
Speaker 1: front of its body down and wag its tail, and
Speaker 1: so they can be fighting. But you know, we know
Speaker 1: everybody's having a good time. Yeah, you can definitely tell
Speaker 1: from their body language when they're they're dead serious and
Speaker 1: when it's 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 it is
Speaker 1: supposed to be a joke, but I did it so
Speaker 1: dryly that that my son doesn't catch it at first,
Speaker 1: and then I have to explain to him, 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 relationship with a kid. Yeah, Like why does why
Speaker 1: does dad basically put clown makeup on every time he
Speaker 1: makes a joke. Well, because he feels like he needs
Speaker 1: to signal that he is not telling you how the
Speaker 1: world worked. He's just trying to make a joke about
Speaker 1: the world. I have nothing to back that up, but
Speaker 1: I'm just just just, uh, you know, um brainstorming here. No,
Speaker 1: I think there's something really too that we we should
Speaker 1: keep 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 ex nations don't
Speaker 1: really seem like they would cover certain types of humor,
Speaker 1: like especially play signaling. I mean, does how would that
Speaker 1: really affect something like puns? It seems kind of hard
Speaker 1: to figure that out. Yeah. Now, another major explanation of
Speaker 1: what's going on when when people experience the feeling of
Speaker 1: humor is what's known as benign violation theory. One study
Speaker 1: we talked about in the past having to do with
Speaker 1: this was by Peter A. McGraw and Caleb Warren called
Speaker 1: Benign Violations Making Immoral Behavior Funny, published in Psychological Science
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten, and this study looked at the
Speaker 1: idea of humor as some kind of violation of norms
Speaker 1: that is recognized by the person who finds it funny
Speaker 1: as not actually very harmful. Uh So, the example they
Speaker 1: used in their study was they they confronted people with
Speaker 1: a news story about a church that had raffled off
Speaker 1: a hummer suv as part of a motion for its
Speaker 1: members for the church goers. And so the thinking here
Speaker 1: is that obviously to some people, that's going to be
Speaker 1: kind of a funny idea, right, Like doing a sort
Speaker 1: of secular like car giveaway at a church would seem
Speaker 1: to in some way undermine the sanctity of the church.
Speaker 1: And they they figured under their theory, well that maybe
Speaker 1: church goers would find this story less funny because they
Speaker 1: would see this violation of the sanctity of the church
Speaker 1: as more actually harmful than non churchgoers would and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't find it as funny if humor is indeed based
Speaker 1: on the idea of a benign violation, and that is
Speaker 1: what they claimed to find in this study. They found
Speaker 1: that churchgoers and non churchgoers were both about equally disgusted
Speaker 1: with the idea of a church giving away a car,
Speaker 1: but they found that non churchgoers found the story more
Speaker 1: humorous than churchgoers did, so I think it was like
Speaker 1: nine percent to sixty two percent. So the idea would
Speaker 1: be that non churchgoers saw this as a benign violation,
Speaker 1: churchgoers saw it as a real harmful violation. And in
Speaker 1: that other episode, we we talked about a bunch of
Speaker 1: reasons why this might and might not work to explain
Speaker 1: certain types of humor, Like, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things that are clearly benign types of violations that just
Speaker 1: aren't funny. But then again, a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that are funny are some type of benign violation. You
Speaker 1: could see easily how you could make them not funny
Speaker 1: by either making them not a violation at all, or
Speaker 1: by making them such a violation that they actually hurt someone. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the past, I've definitely seen the nine violation theory
Speaker 1: being one that that feels feels accurate, like I can
Speaker 1: I can feel it feels like that's what's going on
Speaker 1: in various jokes. But again, I would be hesitant to
Speaker 1: to assign all humor to this one theory. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: seems to me like one that maybe sort of grasping
Speaker 1: in the right direction, But but that might not have
Speaker 1: the full con Who are is of exactly what makes
Speaker 1: something funny or not? Because there are the I mean,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of cases where things are clearly truly
Speaker 1: harmful and people still find them funny. Like sometimes even
Speaker 1: against your better judgment, like you might, something might happen
Speaker 1: that is clearly harmful in one way or another, and
Speaker 1: you find it funny, even though you feel like you
Speaker 1: shouldn't and you feel bad for finding it funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but sometimes they are funnier, like knowing that everyone
Speaker 1: is okay. Like I've seen that that disclaimer placed in
Speaker 1: front of the sharing of various like amusing video clips
Speaker 1: these days, where it will be stressed everybody was fine,
Speaker 1: nobody was actually killed or seriously wounded in what you're
Speaker 1: about to see. Therefore you have you have license to
Speaker 1: actually laugh at it. Now, there's another one we talked
Speaker 1: about just briefly in that other episode that was called
Speaker 1: the incongruity resolution theory, and essentially that says, when there
Speaker 1: is an a mismatch between expectation and reality, you expect
Speaker 1: things to be one way, but then there's something different.
Speaker 1: Laughter occurs when we realize 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 Plato 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 know,
Speaker 1: in the case of direct benefits, you can think about
Speaker 1: the obvious stuff, you know, food, food tastes good because
Speaker 1: you need it to give yourself energy and survive. Or
Speaker 1: it can be much more abstract, like socializing with others
Speaker 1: can feel really good, and that's pretty clearly explicable, and
Speaker 1: that it's the strengthening of social bonds and uh 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 an internal pleasure reward, what is it rewarding? And
Speaker 1: one answer that I that I came across to this
Speaker 1: is that what if it's the brain rewarding itself for
Speaker 1: performing a debugging procedure? Basically, uh, And this was an
Speaker 1: idea 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 to year 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 you don't
Speaker 1: actually say ease at the end of every noun. But
Speaker 1: then the brain rewards you for going through that process
Speaker 1: of debugging the problematic representation in your brain by giving
Speaker 1: you this pleasurable feeling of humor that is in some
Speaker 1: ways analogous to the pleasure that you would get from
Speaker 1: eating delicious food or sleeping or something like that. And
Speaker 1: so this really gets my brain going because I wonder
Speaker 1: about this debugging interpretation. Obviously, you know, I think this
Speaker 1: would have its critics as well, like all of these
Speaker 1: ideas do. But I wonder if you could see evidence
Speaker 1: for this debugging interpretation in the special kinds of humor
Speaker 1: that are especially effective with little kids but start getting
Speaker 1: groans once the kids get older. Is a young brain
Speaker 1: in a more frantic debugging phase? Is it? You know,
Speaker 1: is the young brain more apt to make an inappropriate
Speaker 1: mental representation and then get a lot of pleasure from
Speaker 1: figuring out no, that's not how words work or something
Speaker 1: like that? And uh, is it is it also is
Speaker 1: the young brain more susceptible to bugs of this kind
Speaker 1: in the first place? You know, will will you sort
Speaker 1: of fall for the set up and punchline in a
Speaker 1: way that makes the debugging possible? No, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: I could see that, Uh, that playing a role here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're When the sitcom dad wanders into the room
Speaker 1: and tells a joke, he's not just trying to get
Speaker 1: some cheap laughs. He is debugging the children's brains. He
Speaker 1: is uh, he is helping them sort out, uh, some
Speaker 1: possible errors in their cognition by basically presenting them with
Speaker 1: with little um, little thought puzzles, little thought experiments that
Speaker 1: they have to instantly deal with. I mean this does
Speaker 1: kind of go along with another aspect of humor, which
Speaker 1: is that humor often kind of gives you a little
Speaker 1: bit of a feeling of being smart. Have you ever
Speaker 1: noticed this, Like when when you laugh at something and
Speaker 1: something you find something very funny. In the back of
Speaker 1: your mind, there's almost kind of a little like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're pretty smart, you're a genius. Yeah. Yeah. To to
Speaker 1: get a joke, to laugh at a joke is to
Speaker 1: sync up with the mind of the comedian that it's
Speaker 1: telling it or or has written the joke, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that. Yeah, I can see that interpretation
Speaker 1: for sure. I'm super a little bit smart. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, Okay, I like this this interpretation. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if this is this is part
Speaker 1: of it as well. But it also makes me wonder
Speaker 1: about Um, I guess this came up a little bit earlier,
Speaker 1: but you know, can we understand how dad jokes work
Speaker 1: by looking at when they really do not work? You
Speaker 1: know that period where I guess the kid gets to
Speaker 1: adolescents or whatever, at age whatever age it is, where
Speaker 1: they start to really groan at dad's dad jokes or
Speaker 1: at anybody's dad jokes and and say, Dad, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what exactly has changed that is failing there? And does
Speaker 1: that tell us about what worked with the jokes originally? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if we were to roughly compare it to say,
Speaker 1: a child getting ready to leave the house at a
Speaker 1: younger age, they need a lot of help and reminding
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, a lot of nagging to get
Speaker 1: to get it done. Are your pants on the are
Speaker 1: you wearing the right shirt? Is it buttoned up? Properly,
Speaker 1: let me see your hair. Um. And as they get
Speaker 1: older there, you know, ideally they're they're doing more and
Speaker 1: more of this themselves, and they might take a front
Speaker 1: at you, uh, interjecting yourself and saying, I think you
Speaker 1: need to rebutton that shirt, or I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: that hair looks completely combed, etcetera. So maybe something somewhere
Speaker 1: is going on with the debugging of their brain with
Speaker 1: puns and bad jokes. Is that you're saying, uh, let
Speaker 1: me see that brain of yours for a second, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I got all the bugs, And they're like, Dad,
Speaker 1: I got you got all the bugs. There are no
Speaker 1: bugs left, but maybe there are. You know, that's why
Speaker 1: you keep at it. You know, I'm thinking about another
Speaker 1: interpretation of uh. What could be a possible reason that
Speaker 1: parents keep telling grown inducing jokes as their kids get
Speaker 1: older and start being like the awful mom, dad don't talk?
Speaker 1: You know that that's that's the worst. Is that a
Speaker 1: lot of times what can be frustrating. I think about
Speaker 1: interacting with somebody who's like a teenager is like sort
Speaker 1: of low affect in in many different directions, you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of like inability to give much of a
Speaker 1: response in any direction, and so getting a very very clear,
Speaker 1: gross kind of emotional response in the form of a
Speaker 1: grown at a really really painful pun in a way
Speaker 1: that is a big reaction, right, you know, at a
Speaker 1: time when maybe a lot of kids are just like
Speaker 1: not reacting enough. I don't know if that makes any sense,
Speaker 1: you know it totally does? You know, Like there's this
Speaker 1: uh you know, I don't. I only have limited experience
Speaker 1: with with like the junior high end teenager set, but
Speaker 1: but you know from from interacting with with niece and nephew,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, they're at times there can be that feeling
Speaker 1: of like all right there in their own own little world,
Speaker 1: you know either uh you know, completely absorbed by their
Speaker 1: their phone and what have you. Uh. So maybe you're
Speaker 1: not going to get a laughter laughter out of them,
Speaker 1: but if you can get that grown, if you can
Speaker 1: get their eyes to roll, at least they're listening to you,
Speaker 1: you know, at least you've made some connection and it
Speaker 1: probably ties back into you can make an easy analogy
Speaker 1: to stand up comedy, right like you, I guess you ideally,
Speaker 1: if you can't be the comedian who's just getting you know,
Speaker 1: an uproar of laughter. At least if you could get
Speaker 1: the the opposite, that would be something. If you could
Speaker 1: get like the Andy Kaufman um kind of response right
Speaker 1: where you're just enraging the audience and you know, and
Speaker 1: you're making them feel something. You're still working the comedy,
Speaker 1: but you're you're going after a different emotional response. It
Speaker 1: comes back to the idea that that perhaps dad jokes
Speaker 1: are just a one way of thinking about a particular
Speaker 1: type of humor, that that is, um, is desirable in
Speaker 1: and of itself, outside of any kind of uh parental context.
Speaker 1: And you know, just as this this, you know, used
Speaker 1: to be more popular here as a mainstream form of comedy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's still going to find an audience
Speaker 1: today again in part perhaps because your your guard is
Speaker 1: down to that that slow moving comedic knife. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to look up the name of the martial
Speaker 1: art that you do with the knives in Dune. I
Speaker 1: don't think it has a name, but there are the
Speaker 1: Chris knives in Dune. Yeah, to get past the Holtzman shields. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just the way you try and stab somebody
Speaker 1: with the Holtzman shield But I had forgotten about this
Speaker 1: detail as well. Apparently you can't use lace guns or
Speaker 1: Holtzman shields on Iracus because the energy field created by
Speaker 1: them attracts sandworms. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: that's right. I still need a part of me wants
Speaker 1: to reread the first book again, and now I have
Speaker 1: more time in anticipation of the of the movie when
Speaker 1: it comes out this fall. Uh So, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to decide on that, or maybe I should
Speaker 1: read it to the Boy. I can't decide when is
Speaker 1: the boy old enough for Dune? I don't know, like
Speaker 1: there because there's a lot of heady st up 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 us with a receptivity to Dune
Speaker 1: and like where that coincides. All right, But before we
Speaker 1: close that, I do want to mention one cool dad joke,
Speaker 1: if that is even a thing that sounds like an
Speaker 1: actually moron perhaps, But this was provided by Andrew Bourgeon
Speaker 1: in that nineteen article in the Washingtonian. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: out it goes. When does a bad joke become a
Speaker 1: dad joke? I give up when it's a parent very nice?
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna go ahead and close this one out.
Speaker 1: But obviously we'd love to hear from everybody out there.
Speaker 1: What is your experience with the so called dad joke? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, what's what's your take on it, your experience
Speaker 1: with it on the receiving end, on the giving end. Um.
Speaker 1: We loved, we loved for everyone to chime in on this,
Speaker 1: so uh do let us know. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, including those that we referenced earlier about
Speaker 1: humor and teasing and so forth, you can find them
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast, you know, the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind podcast feed. We've got core episodes on
Speaker 1: science and culture that come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: On Monday's, we have a listener mail. On Wednesday's we
Speaker 1: usually have an artifact unless it's been preempted by something.
Speaker 1: And on Friday's that's when we do Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: where we leave most of the science on the shelf
Speaker 1: instead focus on some sort of a weird picture. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we have a Vault episode on the weekend
Speaker 1: that's a rerun. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at
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