Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: What are some words that, to you are inherently funny
Speaker 1: or words and or things that just just say the
Speaker 1: word instantly? It italystits black monkey, all right, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. Pickle is good. Later hosing later hosing is
Speaker 1: really good. Poppy cock, poppy cock, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: To sueech squeechy. Yeah you, um, well, let's see you
Speaker 1: already took later hosing. I think later hos is a
Speaker 1: good one. Cheese cheese is very funny. Um, you said monkey, Um,
Speaker 1: you stole a lot of underwear. Underwear is always hilarious. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because a lot of these words will
Speaker 1: pop up in children's books, which, of course I'm knee
Speaker 1: deep in with my toddler, so you know, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: schooled in the funny words. Bugle is yeah, curious, George,
Speaker 1: that one comes up, but you're talking about like an
Speaker 1: obnoxious instrument or some sort of ridiculous corn snack. It's pretty,
Speaker 1: which can be tasty, but also there are some words
Speaker 1: that have a kind of joke within them or something likecalyptian,
Speaker 1: which which means well formed buttocks. I had not heard
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great word. So
Speaker 1: you know, you can say the ecalyptian so and so.
Speaker 1: Uh if you're trying to get someone to compliment. I
Speaker 1: suppose what is it an adjective? Yes, okay, yeah, and
Speaker 1: calie from Greek beautiful and pig. I think that's how
Speaker 1: you pronounce it is means buttocks or rump. Rump is
Speaker 1: another good one. Rump is funny. Yeah. Yeah, So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about what makes yeah right, I mean that
Speaker 1: that spells fun right there. But talking about the funny
Speaker 1: like what why are things funny? I don't know, because yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about the words that we're talking. What
Speaker 1: are some words that are just not funny at all? Yes,
Speaker 1: And the big one that came to mind that you
Speaker 1: you came up with was table table, Like there's just
Speaker 1: no way to make the word table funny, Like even
Speaker 1: if you throw um other words onto it, like you could,
Speaker 1: you know, sex, table, clown table, clown table, it's still
Speaker 1: sounds kind of It's like alright, well, clowns kind of funny.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're just for elements, which is part of
Speaker 1: what we found out in our research about what makes
Speaker 1: things funny. You have to have sometimes desperate elements like that,
Speaker 1: but still it's not funny. And it was It's interesting
Speaker 1: because I was looking back at an episode from This
Speaker 1: American Life in which it's called Tough Room, in which
Speaker 1: they visited the editorial offices of The Onion, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, spoof magazine, which is incredibly funny, at least
Speaker 1: to me. Um, And what they found out is that
Speaker 1: during the editorial meeting whether mock headlines are pitched, that
Speaker 1: there's only one laugh for every one hundred jokes that
Speaker 1: are told. This out here they are pitching this and
Speaker 1: maybe that's part of it because you know, this is
Speaker 1: their job and they're doing it every week and so
Speaker 1: but still, yeah, they're seriously jaded. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: they published sixteen stories a week with sixteen mock headlines,
Speaker 1: and to get to those sixteen headlines, they go through
Speaker 1: six hundred possible headlines to figure out what is funny.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know, I wonder why why
Speaker 1: that is? Like why are some combinations funnier? Than other
Speaker 1: and others, and then I looked into it and I
Speaker 1: was looking at some of their best off and one
Speaker 1: of their best ofs was kitten thinks of nothing but
Speaker 1: murder all day. See now that one didn't do much
Speaker 1: for me. I don't know really, well they have. Part
Speaker 1: of it was that the cute photo of the kitten,
Speaker 1: which you you know again desperate elements murder kitten, No, no,
Speaker 1: not really all right, Well, in that episode two, they
Speaker 1: were talking about how the headline local girlfriend always wants
Speaker 1: to do stuff. Okay, that makes the cut, but you
Speaker 1: know it doesn't make the cut. In the same session,
Speaker 1: is Nation's Girlfriends all for more quality time? Funny? No, no,
Speaker 1: it's the first one got the laugh and everybody the
Speaker 1: second one actually got jeers. But kittens was a hit.
Speaker 1: Kittens obviously was a hit. Made it it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a hit. A lot of people's top ten lists. Interesting, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: um but just to throw some stats at this and
Speaker 1: why we're looking at this, um uh, it's just it's
Speaker 1: very interesting to think about why we laugh from evolutionary sense, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: like what why why don't we do it? Why is
Speaker 1: it such a phenomenon? Like what purpose does it serve?
Speaker 1: We do it all the time. We love it. Some
Speaker 1: people live for it, some people live to make other
Speaker 1: people laugh. But what is what is actually going on? Semantically?
Speaker 1: What's going on neutologically? Yeah, so that's what we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss. That's what we're gonna talk about today. And
Speaker 1: here are your stats too that we're gonna throw at you.
Speaker 1: Only about eleven of daily laughter as a result of jokes. Now,
Speaker 1: when you say jokes, do you mean because like we
Speaker 1: we joke around in this podcast a lot, but it's
Speaker 1: very rare that you go, hey, Julie, um not not.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't do a lot of that. So
Speaker 1: are we talking about strict joke jokes joking? Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the formula jokes. So if you're sitting around
Speaker 1: the water color and someone says, hey, you know, a
Speaker 1: rabbi and a priest and whatever walks through a bar,
Speaker 1: that kind of joke. So that only eleven percent, which
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense, right because a lot of us
Speaker 1: aren't sitting around the water cooler telling those kind of jokes,
Speaker 1: the porched belt jokes. And then another seventeen is prompted
Speaker 1: by media, you know, sort of like Hey, did you
Speaker 1: see the clo l cator? Did you read the Sunion headline?
Speaker 1: Did you watch this episode of thirty? Yeah? I did
Speaker 1: you see this YouTube video? Or so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And the remaining seventy two percent arises spontaneously in social interactions.
Speaker 1: So like you and I sitting here and talking the
Speaker 1: talking the pooh here, okay, talking the poo? Is that
Speaker 1: the shouting the shoe? Shouting the shoes? Yeah, true shot.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to avoid the expletip. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: saying just in um. And it turns out that that
Speaker 1: we're not the only creatures that laugh. Eight and rats
Speaker 1: lack too. Although I'm a little bit dubious about this,
Speaker 1: this rats part, I have to say, um, this is
Speaker 1: uh this This article says that like children, apes laugh
Speaker 1: during chasing, wrestling and tickling games. Oh I guess I
Speaker 1: have seen videos where you know, it looks like they're
Speaker 1: wrestling around and it lives. It does look like the
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And it says chimps and gorillas who have
Speaker 1: learned sign language have used it for punning and congruous
Speaker 1: word use, which is interesting and playful insults. Intriguingly, it
Speaker 1: seems that rats may laugh too. This is this is
Speaker 1: where I get dubious. A team of researchers at Bowling
Speaker 1: Green State University reported in two thousand that rats produce
Speaker 1: an ultrasonic chirping during play and went tickled by humans.
Speaker 1: These chirps appear to be contagious, and young rats prefer
Speaker 1: older rats who produce more of them. So, you know, again,
Speaker 1: dubious there, But there's this idea of that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just us that are sitting there having a chuckle,
Speaker 1: and then it's necessary to our existence on some level.
Speaker 1: And we'll get back to more about tickling and in
Speaker 1: a little bit. Tickling is very key. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like the most simple version of a joke. Yes, but
Speaker 1: but we'll we'll get to that in a minute. First,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about what's going on at the cognitive level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the head to our brains when we're
Speaker 1: having a laugh. Turns out that when we hear a joke,
Speaker 1: our brains began to process that sequentially. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: found it interesting that you can when it when it's
Speaker 1: following when your brain begins to to process this. They're
Speaker 1: really sort of two types of jokes that and uh,
Speaker 1: and those are on one hand, you have a semantic
Speaker 1: jokes which relate to the meaning of words, and then
Speaker 1: you have phonological or jokes or puns, which relate to
Speaker 1: the way something sounds. And like the puns the example
Speaker 1: I kept finding like it seems like everybody uses the
Speaker 1: same pun joke in the scientific literature, which goes as follows,
Speaker 1: Hey Julie, Hey Robert, why did the all for wear
Speaker 1: two pairs of pants because they had a hole in one? Seeing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the semantic jokes, that's where you get into like
Speaker 1: a lot deeper area, um and where you end up
Speaker 1: having onres like double andres and triple andres, which I've
Speaker 1: always found really fascinating. Like here, like here's an example
Speaker 1: of a of a triple on andre if I bother
Speaker 1: to print out the full joke, Nope, I didn't drip
Speaker 1: print out the full joke, So I'm just gonna try
Speaker 1: and remember here, but a triple on andre Uh would
Speaker 1: be like the joke where um, ladies pulled over by
Speaker 1: highway patrolman and uh, and you know he comes up
Speaker 1: to get her ticket and shoes like, oh, I bet
Speaker 1: you're going to try and sell me a ticket to
Speaker 1: the policeman's ball, and then the like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a ball, like a gala okay, and then the
Speaker 1: cop gets you know, your tat's like, policemen don't have balls.
Speaker 1: So this is a triple on Andre because on one
Speaker 1: one see, and I was already laughing because you said ball,
Speaker 1: and I was already made the association, to be quite honest,
Speaker 1: but it's but here I'm I'm a dirty bird. Well
Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain the joke and take all the humor
Speaker 1: out of it. Um, policemen don't have balls, So you
Speaker 1: can say that policemen do not and we're not making
Speaker 1: any judgment. Great, but policemen don't have balls. One interpretation
Speaker 1: presumably mails them. Yeah, well yeah, but policemen don't have
Speaker 1: balls in the sense that they do not actually hold balls.
Speaker 1: They don't have to have like masked events and like
Speaker 1: yeah big masks. Yeah. But then it's also a shot
Speaker 1: on the policeman's masculinity and also on his like his virility,
Speaker 1: you know, and also on his courage. So um, there's
Speaker 1: some also really good examples of triple and andres in
Speaker 1: uh in Canterbury Tales. But I think they're all, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yes. Yes, they're like, yeah, they're just too gross
Speaker 1: to drag out. In this particular. I think they're on
Speaker 1: the Millers shale or something. Yeah, but we'll have to
Speaker 1: remember that because that's an important joke to come back
Speaker 1: to later when we talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: philosophy behind jokes. Yeah, but but this is this is
Speaker 1: interesting because like it it's kind of like a language
Speaker 1: bomb where it's like three meanings roll up into wine,
Speaker 1: hit your brain, and then your brain has to figure
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, especially when when you're talking about like
Speaker 1: the double entendres um, your brain is trying to square
Speaker 1: all these different ideas together. And so what you're seeing,
Speaker 1: let me, let's just walk you really quickly through what's
Speaker 1: actually happening in your head. Uh. So, the left hemisphere
Speaker 1: begins to light up with language processing right, and this
Speaker 1: includes the left and right posterior middle temporal gyrus and
Speaker 1: the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus for semantic jokes as
Speaker 1: you spoke about, and the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus
Speaker 1: and left inferior frontal gyrus, which are associated with the puns.
Speaker 1: The phonetic processing. Then the joke is processed through the
Speaker 1: nucleus accumbents in the ventral tegmental area. Both are part
Speaker 1: of the mesa limbic pathway, which is associated with aggression, fear, laughter, addiction, pleasure,
Speaker 1: and it also is connected, among other things, to the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: which we know deals with memories. So there's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's like when this word bomb blows up, it really
Speaker 1: ricochets through all the neural architecture. Yeah yeah, and then
Speaker 1: it's hanging out to you in the magdala, which we
Speaker 1: know is associated with the emotions. So what I think
Speaker 1: it is most interesting about this is just really hitting
Speaker 1: that reward center of the brain. And so we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the reward circuits of the brain getting
Speaker 1: in on the joke, which makes sense with some of
Speaker 1: these philosophical theories about what's going on when we hear
Speaker 1: a good like say, toilet humor joke. Right, yeah, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of these philosophies because I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Oh yeah, yeah, But but real quick, this
Speaker 1: also makes makes sense. You know if you're hear like
Speaker 1: a really long drawn out joke and you're you're like,
Speaker 1: get to the punch line. I want to, you know,
Speaker 1: because I guess it's the reward center. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's your rang Yeah, give it to me. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I need a little dopamine release right now from them.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's look at Yeah, it's the different
Speaker 1: philosophical theories on jokes. Um. First of all, there's this
Speaker 1: superiority theory of humor. Yes, and this is one that
Speaker 1: has been a champion by Plato, Aristotle, uh, Thomas, Thomas
Speaker 1: Hobbs and uh. And this is basically where we find
Speaker 1: the misfortune of others really amusing. This is like slapstick
Speaker 1: guys getting hit in the head. This is on a
Speaker 1: more well slightly cerebral level. You have like cringe comedies
Speaker 1: where where people are making all sorts of either they're
Speaker 1: not falling on their face literally, then they're doing so
Speaker 1: figuratively in say an episode of the Office or something. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah yeah. That can make you really uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: right right. Uh And speaking of uncomfortable, the next kind
Speaker 1: is relief theory. And of course Sigmund Freud is a
Speaker 1: big champion, was a big champion of this, and this
Speaker 1: states that comedy is a way for people to release
Speaker 1: suppress thoughts and emotions safely. Yeah. I actually read something
Speaker 1: about the game Peekaboo that kids play toddler's play, and
Speaker 1: about how this is sort of like a mastering your
Speaker 1: own uncertainty. And it's the same sort of aspect of
Speaker 1: you keep playing Peekaboo with someone and they disappear, and
Speaker 1: that's this object permanence thinking that all this stuff with
Speaker 1: child development. But basically what it's saying is that you
Speaker 1: feel you're you're playing the game with someone disappearing in
Speaker 1: this uncertainty and then coming back and there's the relief, right,
Speaker 1: So you're sort of working out all these feelings in
Speaker 1: a safe environment. Right. And it also allows like the
Speaker 1: exploration of taboo subjects or just sort of crude things
Speaker 1: like fart, jokes, good stuff. And then we have incongruity
Speaker 1: theory UM, which is generally associated with Immanuel Kent, and
Speaker 1: it suggests that jokes happen because people notice the disconnect
Speaker 1: between their expectations and the actual payoff. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: like like nonsense humor tends to fall into this where
Speaker 1: something something happens that that doesn't make a lick of sense,
Speaker 1: and it's it creates ambiguity creates ambiguity, like like Monty
Speaker 1: Python is often put up as an example of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or a simple set up like a woman and a
Speaker 1: duck walk into a bar. Right, there's two disparate elements.
Speaker 1: I don't know the end of that joke, and I
Speaker 1: apologize if I know, right, see, sorry about that. No
Speaker 1: dopamine for you. But um, but I mean that's the setup,
Speaker 1: Like your brain is automatically like what a woman, a
Speaker 1: duck a bar. That's that's the ambiguity. But going back
Speaker 1: to your your policeman ball balls joke, Um there, I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting that the whole superiority there, Stottle that
Speaker 1: that type of joke, because here you have, uh, it's
Speaker 1: an authority, right, a policeman, and you're sort of leveling
Speaker 1: the playing field by making fun of this policeman's masculinity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's the one who's tricked into saying he has
Speaker 1: no ball, so it's yeah, it's he's he's made a
Speaker 1: fool out of himself as well. Yeah. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think these philosophers are really interesting when you
Speaker 1: start to you know, of course we're taking part of
Speaker 1: the joke, which is never funny. Um. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there's there's a quote about like dissecting humors about
Speaker 1: as funny as dissecting a frog, you know, uh, and
Speaker 1: the frog dies. So but there is this one guy.
Speaker 1: There's always going to be that one guy, that one
Speaker 1: gal who is looking for the reason why we do
Speaker 1: what we do. And in this instance, there's a man
Speaker 1: named Peter McGraw. He's a professor of marketing and psychology
Speaker 1: at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and he heads up
Speaker 1: the Humor Research Lab or HURL for short, um, and
Speaker 1: he's trying to create a grand unified theory of humor.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that in a moment right after
Speaker 1: this break. This presentation is brought to you by Intel
Speaker 1: Sponsors of Tomorrow. All Right, we're back with the with
Speaker 1: the Grand Unified Theory of humor, which which I just
Speaker 1: I just imagine like these uh, these different scientists like
Speaker 1: standing around like in clown wigs and uh and and
Speaker 1: like just is furiously working in laboratories with site gags. Well,
Speaker 1: what is funny about this is that this research lab
Speaker 1: they pretty much do everything that you could ever think
Speaker 1: of to asked out what makes something funny like they
Speaker 1: actually even get some of their subjects high on mary
Speaker 1: Jouanna and these are people who are in who are
Speaker 1: using it legally for medical purposes. Yeah yeah, yeah, So UM,
Speaker 1: that's important to talk about so that that doesn't get
Speaker 1: rated after someone ss the podcast UM or people start
Speaker 1: calling up saying, dude, they're not really any be part
Speaker 1: of this experiment. Um, but yeah. I mean they're sitting
Speaker 1: there playing like hot tub time machine with you know,
Speaker 1: the control group which is not high, and the medical
Speaker 1: marijuana UM subjects, and trying to figure out if duh,
Speaker 1: you know, if this this drug would make something funnier.
Speaker 1: And they're actually even like having some people watch it
Speaker 1: from you know, a certain distance and then another distance
Speaker 1: from the TV to the two the eyes to see
Speaker 1: if that makes it funnier. So every single thing that
Speaker 1: you could think of, their trying to test about what
Speaker 1: makes something funny, including like the distance in which you
Speaker 1: watch an action unfold, which is kind of nuts. So
Speaker 1: like if you watch somebody do something stupid if you're
Speaker 1: and close to them versus we watching them far away. Well,
Speaker 1: and this is more for UM for for media, right,
Speaker 1: so for if you're watching something on the internet or
Speaker 1: something on the TV, and again this is you know,
Speaker 1: you have to look at this. This is a guy
Speaker 1: who is professor of marketing and psychology, so obviously he's
Speaker 1: going to be using whatever findings he has for marketing purposes.
Speaker 1: And since you know, internet is a huge part of
Speaker 1: the way that we consume our comedy these days, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously they're going to be some people who are going
Speaker 1: to buy into this research eventually. So that means, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to talk about the bottom line here.
Speaker 1: It's usually money that's motivating this, but they're big work
Speaker 1: is this unit unified theory. This unified theory is just
Speaker 1: funny because it's almost like the theory of everything when
Speaker 1: we talk about string theory, because because like in that,
Speaker 1: we're talking about all these different theories about how the
Speaker 1: universe works, and they don't all work in unison. They
Speaker 1: can each sort of they can describe aspects of the
Speaker 1: universe and on the full picture. So the argument here
Speaker 1: is like the superiority theory, the relief theory, the incongruity theory,
Speaker 1: these are all great and they can describe large sections
Speaker 1: of humor, and they can describe like whole um, you know,
Speaker 1: whole TV shows, but they're not a unified theory of
Speaker 1: what's going on. Yeah, they're not. There's not everything wrapped
Speaker 1: up into one. But this dude says that there there
Speaker 1: is this unified theory and is called the benign violation theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like most things, it seems it relates. Uh, it
Speaker 1: manages to explain everything through a Venn diagram, which if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not familiar with the I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: seen them in infographics on not really infographics or just
Speaker 1: graphics on the internet. Um, but it's like two big
Speaker 1: circles and they're overlapping just a little bit, and where
Speaker 1: the two circles overlap, that's where the magic happens and
Speaker 1: whatever is being described. Yeah, and actually there's a great
Speaker 1: visual on why are this is one of one of
Speaker 1: the pieces of research that led us to this and
Speaker 1: the article is called One Professor's Attempt to Explain Every
Speaker 1: Joke Ever told. And that's that's where you can actually
Speaker 1: see this diagram, which is you know, again funny that
Speaker 1: they're even applying a Venn diagram to it. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but it but it sums it up really nicely. Be
Speaker 1: is in this then diagram like you don't have to
Speaker 1: look at it. In fact, don't look at it. Just
Speaker 1: listen to me. Um. Two big circles walk into a bar,
Speaker 1: two big circles. One is labeled um violation and one
Speaker 1: is labeled benign. Now, when we're talking benign, we're talking
Speaker 1: like the word table um um table table is the
Speaker 1: most benign thing we could come up with. But things
Speaker 1: that are not threatening to us, things that are maybe
Speaker 1: just you know, they're normal, they're not even, they're not
Speaker 1: really funny. And the nothing in each circle is funny harm, right,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna create any harm. They're just benign, all right.
Speaker 1: Then you have the violation um circle and not everything
Speaker 1: in the in the violation circle is inherently funny, but
Speaker 1: but can become funny. Um. So these are things like
Speaker 1: violations of personal dignity, of linguistic norms, like somebody has
Speaker 1: an unusual accent, you know, in personal dignity would be
Speaker 1: like slapstick physical deformities, you know, and like slapsticking in
Speaker 1: like banana peel jokes, right, like slipping out of an
Speaker 1: an appeal. Social norms like you know, just anybody behaving
Speaker 1: strangely moral norms people doing things that are entirely disrespectful
Speaker 1: or or just outrageously awful. Um and uh and and
Speaker 1: so that's the violation sphere. And when these two overlap,
Speaker 1: well you have something that is that is at once
Speaker 1: benign and a violation. That's where the humor happens. So
Speaker 1: you could have something that in life where it truly
Speaker 1: is threatening, but when you overlay it with something that's benign,
Speaker 1: you take the threat out of it, and you still
Speaker 1: have the taboo, and then you get the funny, right right, okay.
Speaker 1: And so they use the example of Sarah Silverman, you know,
Speaker 1: to say this is a perfect example of b VT,
Speaker 1: which I thought was funny because she really deals in
Speaker 1: some very awkward territory in which she talks about sexual abuse, incest,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Best reality with I mean,
Speaker 1: she has a cute little dog that oftentimes she makes
Speaker 1: some inferences that are awful. It's disgusting. Sometimes she's really
Speaker 1: into toilet humor too, but she gets away with it
Speaker 1: because she's cute and she comes off I mean, her
Speaker 1: persona anyway is one of kind of a dunce. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they say the the professor says that she can
Speaker 1: say these appalling things because it registers has been known
Speaker 1: because she she seems so oblivious to their offensiveness, so
Speaker 1: she's downplaying in a sense. And then he says, because
Speaker 1: she's so darn cute. Yeah. So, um, it's really interesting
Speaker 1: to look at it that way. And what's like like
Speaker 1: like even things that are truly horrible like cancer. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like in the it's definitely in the violations sphere
Speaker 1: of things. But but but it can cross over into
Speaker 1: that area where it can in theory. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't have any examples, but I mean you hear comedians
Speaker 1: joke about cancer, You hear them joke about I mean,
Speaker 1: you name it, and no matter how horrible it is,
Speaker 1: I guarantee somebody has made a joke about it. Well
Speaker 1: what do you allen? Who said once or something like
Speaker 1: tragedy plus time equals comedy. So there has to be
Speaker 1: that distance, yes, And and I think that's that's what
Speaker 1: really is we're going to continue to discuss here. I
Speaker 1: think that's what's really awesome about about comedy and about
Speaker 1: what this this theory um seems to to point to
Speaker 1: as far as this, this this convergence area, this be
Speaker 1: nine violation area. But but real quick back to table
Speaker 1: one thing. You are so intrigued the table. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like like, like I said, everything in the violation area
Speaker 1: can conceivably become comedy. I think, but can, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I have this feeling that not everything in the benign
Speaker 1: can become comedy. Yeah, yeah, Like what would you have
Speaker 1: to start out funny? Well, you'd have to be tickled
Speaker 1: on a table, right, I don't know. Maybe Okay, if
Speaker 1: we're a gurney, Yes, a gurney could be funny, but
Speaker 1: a gurney is no longer at has tragedy associated with Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so that's the violation where a table is just to
Speaker 1: just empty of meaning. Yeah, and you and you're right,
Speaker 1: you always are going to have to go to the
Speaker 1: to the violation category first and then overlay the line
Speaker 1: I think. I don't know, I say always, not being
Speaker 1: a humorologist, but yeah, like like table not funny, sex,
Speaker 1: table not funny sex, gurney funny sex, gurnee awesome and
Speaker 1: a good name for a band. But let's talk about tickling, Okay, Yes,
Speaker 1: tickling is is a great example of violation in benign
Speaker 1: hitting each other because you're being tickled and you're laughing
Speaker 1: if you're ticklish. If you're not ticklish, you're something's wrong
Speaker 1: with you. But but you're being tickled and you're just
Speaker 1: laughing your face off. But at the same time you're like,
Speaker 1: don't do it. Stop it tickled me anymore. But like,
Speaker 1: so what's going on there? Because I'm I'm enjoying it
Speaker 1: yet I'm hating it. It's it's this weird um combination
Speaker 1: of things. Okay, well this this is from the article.
Speaker 1: They say that even tickling, longest stumbling block for humor theorists,
Speaker 1: appears to fit into this BBT. Tickling yourself can't be
Speaker 1: a violation because you can't take yourself by surprise. Being
Speaker 1: tickled by a stranger and a trench coat isn't benign.
Speaker 1: It's creepy. I would agree with that. Only tickling by
Speaker 1: someone you know and trust can be of a nine violation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so that makes sense, right because you already
Speaker 1: have this sort of um communication between each other or
Speaker 1: trust level. It's not creepy. And that reminds me, wasn't there.
Speaker 1: There's a politician who I think the last year or
Speaker 1: so got some hot water because he tickled one of
Speaker 1: his aids, which was, that's a situation we're sure you
Speaker 1: know that someone, that's someone, but you're not completely inappropriate
Speaker 1: in the workplace in case ticklegate and they really Yeah,
Speaker 1: it got a lot of traction actually because I mean
Speaker 1: tis well no, but really a meaning just coming by
Speaker 1: and tickling us. Yeah, that would be weird. Or if
Speaker 1: you saw you have you were to see your boss
Speaker 1: tickle somebody work, you'd be like, what kind of relationship
Speaker 1: is that? And I did have a boss actually, but
Speaker 1: that's for an entirely that's not even for the podcast.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, well he did. Yeah, he tickled people. He
Speaker 1: actually asked people to smell his milk to to make
Speaker 1: sure it hadn't gone rancid. Wait I didn't last there
Speaker 1: very long. Um So anyway, what this all ties into
Speaker 1: this whole violation thing and this benign violation and trust
Speaker 1: and not trust ties into what they say the ultimate
Speaker 1: takeaway of McGraw's um studies are is that the evolutionary
Speaker 1: purpose of laughter and amusement is to signal to the
Speaker 1: world that a violation is indeed okay. Building on the
Speaker 1: work of behavioral neurologists vs. Ramachandran, we talked about him before.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of really interesting stuff. Mc graw believes
Speaker 1: that laughter developed as an instinctual way to signal that
Speaker 1: a threat is actually a false. Alarmed say that a
Speaker 1: rustle in the bushes is in the wind, but not
Speaker 1: a saber tooth tiger, right, so it's the wind, not
Speaker 1: not a tiger. Well like that. The classic example that
Speaker 1: comes to mind isn't you're you're watching a horror movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they do the typical like something jumps out and
Speaker 1: you're like, everybody already freaks out, and then you see, oh,
Speaker 1: it was just the wind blowing, and it's a really
Speaker 1: cheap horror movie effect. But then everybody laughs be like,
Speaker 1: oh that was nothing. It's the relief part, right, So
Speaker 1: which is the Freudian film you know, philosophy behind that.
Speaker 1: But you can imagine like some primordial hunters like out
Speaker 1: you know, on on the grass and something, some they're
Speaker 1: selling this movement and they freak out and they lift
Speaker 1: their stone weapons to to to to beat it away,
Speaker 1: to hack it to pieces, and it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the wind. It's it's where it's their their
Speaker 1: scout coming back from the other side of the hill
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, you know, sort of laughing at yourself.
Speaker 1: So it's laughing the situation, laughing at yourself. UM. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that we thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: about it is, particularly in this instance of UM an
Speaker 1: evolutionary sense, is how is it you socially? I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen arguments before. I'm sure you've seen it to
Speaker 1: where where something escalates between two people, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: common that one person will say something humorous to sort
Speaker 1: of try to negate the escalation of the argument. So
Speaker 1: humor is definitely used in a social way as a
Speaker 1: sort of social contract to say, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is a false threat. Don't worry. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: hurt you. You're not going to hurt me. Um. But
Speaker 1: we also wanted to look at it in a wider sense,
Speaker 1: and it reminded us of this bit in the book
Speaker 1: called Freaking Omics that sort of examines you know, the
Speaker 1: underlying um this is the thing having to do with
Speaker 1: clu Klux Klan And what they found is that, uh,
Speaker 1: well it's kind of a long story, but basically there's
Speaker 1: just one guy who infiltrated the k k K and
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, Yeah, and everybody sing with Clux Klan,
Speaker 1: I would imagine, But this is the white supremacist group
Speaker 1: that grew out of a right right And actually they
Speaker 1: got the idea for the sheets over the head from
Speaker 1: the film Presive Nation. Okay, but anyway, this guy, he
Speaker 1: sort of went under cover and he hung out with
Speaker 1: klu Klux Klan for a very long time and he
Speaker 1: figured out all of their passwords and all of their
Speaker 1: different secrets with secret handshakes. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: is a really goofy organization. Yeah. I was looking through
Speaker 1: one of their manuals once because like an old manual
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, my family came from the South, so
Speaker 1: at some point in the past, like some old uncle
Speaker 1: or great great uncle was involved in it. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so so I ended up getting to touch this like
Speaker 1: crumbling manual and it is the goofiest thing you ever saw.
Speaker 1: I mean not to dis that. That's the thing about
Speaker 1: goofy and humor that because because at one level you
Speaker 1: can't discount that these guys terrists. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they were calling themselves the clu Klux Klan, and they
Speaker 1: had words like that, something like the grand Clue clay Gold.
Speaker 1: They all have these ridiculous titles. And I've subsequently read
Speaker 1: that like words that have the clock sound in it
Speaker 1: or the cuss sound are inherently funny. That's why clown
Speaker 1: is inherently funny. Um, And that's why. And you've got clocks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cloths was like a cluck and I mean that's just right.
Speaker 1: So they were really asking for it. They were completely
Speaker 1: asking for it in the sense to be made fun of, um,
Speaker 1: and also to be brought down. Really, but they even
Speaker 1: had like a secret handshake that had like a fish
Speaker 1: wiggle or something. I mean, really, it doesn't get any
Speaker 1: any sillier than that anyway. So this insider found out
Speaker 1: all this information. Um, he was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what do I do with this information to make it
Speaker 1: most effective. He did a couple of different things, but
Speaker 1: then he figured out, what, you know, the only way
Speaker 1: to really bring them to their knees as an organization
Speaker 1: is to take the secrecy out of what they were doing.
Speaker 1: And so he fed all the information that he had
Speaker 1: amassed the producers of a radio show Superman actually, and
Speaker 1: it was the Superman, the Superman radio show in the forties,
Speaker 1: and he said, why don't we do a series that's
Speaker 1: called Superman versus the Clan, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's go for it. And so he wove all
Speaker 1: of those secrets, the handshakes, the passwords, so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, the coding into the narrative. And so what
Speaker 1: ultimately was their demise is that all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they heard this being broadcast and they realized that they
Speaker 1: were not a super secret organization anymore. They could not
Speaker 1: um move in the ways that they had moved before,
Speaker 1: and so that essentially sort of grounded them. But not
Speaker 1: only that, but they saw was that their kids were
Speaker 1: playing out the drama of what they were doing, and
Speaker 1: some of them were pretending to be Superman vanquishing the
Speaker 1: klu Klux Klan, and that you know, some of them
Speaker 1: are tending to be the klu Klux Klan members with
Speaker 1: sheets over their heads, and they were they basically are
Speaker 1: making a mockery of the klu Klux Klan, which again
Speaker 1: they were begging to be mocked right with, with all
Speaker 1: of their myriad silly silliness there. But uh, this was
Speaker 1: just really greatly um sort of hamstrong what they were
Speaker 1: trying to do. And it's fascinating, it's it's it's indirect,
Speaker 1: but it's humor that leveled the playing field. So you
Speaker 1: drag something horrible out of this uh, out of the
Speaker 1: sphere of of violation, bring it into that crossover between
Speaker 1: violation and benign, and you can remove the terror from it.
Speaker 1: You can remove the fear from it. Yes, because even
Speaker 1: though yes, they did kill people absolutely um, and they
Speaker 1: didn't do it very often, but they did it enough
Speaker 1: to to make it a real threat to people. Right,
Speaker 1: so they were a real threat. But you know what
Speaker 1: was happening is that people were saying, really, these are
Speaker 1: a bunch of cowards who put sheets over their heads
Speaker 1: and they're doing horrible things. And you know, they were
Speaker 1: sort of calling them for what they were, and that
Speaker 1: really took the power out of the structure. It reminds
Speaker 1: me like anytime I hear conversations about humor and get
Speaker 1: into discussions of the nature of humor, I think back
Speaker 1: to m Berto Eco's book The Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: which which deeply concerns humor. Um. They're like, there's the
Speaker 1: whole plot about this missing UH book post Aristotle's the
Speaker 1: Second Book of Poetics, and UH, it contains all this
Speaker 1: stuff about humor and there's a character in the book
Speaker 1: that's very concerned about such a book falling into the
Speaker 1: into the hands of the general population, or at least
Speaker 1: the general monastic population. This monastery, this medieval monastery. Because
Speaker 1: it if someone like Aristotle were to say humor is great,
Speaker 1: then then where it is it? In do you end up?
Speaker 1: You know, because when you laugh at something, you take
Speaker 1: away its power. And so what what if what happens
Speaker 1: when you when you laugh at at the church? What
Speaker 1: happens when you laugh at God? Uh? That you know,
Speaker 1: the power of humor to change society is uh is
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. Um I was, I was running across looking
Speaker 1: for other examples of this, and uh, I found an
Speaker 1: interesting essay. They don't have to link in the accompanying
Speaker 1: blog post for this podcast, but they found that cartoons
Speaker 1: mocking capitalism played a huge role in the rise of
Speaker 1: socialism in the United States in the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: because they're all these political cartoons and they were, you know,
Speaker 1: they'd show the capitalist you know, creating all these like
Speaker 1: fat cat capitalist, um, you know icons in the in
Speaker 1: the in the political cartoons, and they were and they
Speaker 1: were using this to to drag this topic into the
Speaker 1: into the comedic area, and and it helped, you know,
Speaker 1: helped the rise of socialism. Well, we talked to you
Speaker 1: about just even sitcom's Jefferson's or a family Archie Bunker.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he presented some horrible violations, right, um,
Speaker 1: and yet there there was a benign factor because they
Speaker 1: were making fun of Archie Bunker, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: in a sense they were you know, he his he
Speaker 1: had a sort of certain personal truth, but that truth
Speaker 1: was sometimes silly. I mean, you know, obviously a lot
Speaker 1: of times silly when they shown that light on him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it sort of broke some of the barriers
Speaker 1: that you might not talk about in civilized conversation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it also I think you do see examples too
Speaker 1: of of what appears to be take up perceived violations
Speaker 1: by some like things that it's some segments of the
Speaker 1: population don't don't agree with. Like we were talking about
Speaker 1: Modern Family, which is a current sitcom I think, and
Speaker 1: I think it just wrapped up its second season, and
Speaker 1: and this shows some some traditionally non traditional families. I
Speaker 1: mean that I think each model is a lot more
Speaker 1: common now, but but non traditional in the TV sense
Speaker 1: because you have you have a gay couple that's adopted
Speaker 1: a child, so in that you have both both a
Speaker 1: gay couple and an adoptive family which are both under reference.
Speaker 1: Child is Vietnamese too. Yeah, so it's multily. It's also
Speaker 1: multi racial. Then you have like you know, then you
Speaker 1: have more you have another multi racial couple where there's
Speaker 1: also a big age difference, and and so you you
Speaker 1: take these ideas which to some segments of the population
Speaker 1: would be considered violations and you but you move into
Speaker 1: a mainstream comedic area and we're suddenly we can find
Speaker 1: humor in these situations and it and it removes the sting.
Speaker 1: Right well, yeah, you you move lest from um looking
Speaker 1: at something objectively and more to humanizing it right now. Um, now,
Speaker 1: of course with all this so you have to you
Speaker 1: have to keep it. There's also sort of a chicken
Speaker 1: and egg thing with any of these topics because you you,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you can't say, oh, well, uh, the
Speaker 1: Jefferson's changed, you know, changed the way we think about
Speaker 1: race or something like that. I mean, that would be ridiculous. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of mirroring where the the show
Speaker 1: is mirroring changing attitudes. So so it was so we're
Speaker 1: not arguing that these shows are are have just tremendous,
Speaker 1: unparalleled power, but but I do think they tie into
Speaker 1: into the role comedy plays in social change. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just one quick sort of science note here too, is
Speaker 1: we came across this research. It was a dot com
Speaker 1: talk on humor and smiling specifically, and it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: It was this study they had a control group of
Speaker 1: people watching things that were funny and they would rate
Speaker 1: them from like one to five what they thought was funny.
Speaker 1: And then they had another group that had a pencil
Speaker 1: in their mouth, holding a pen in their mouth while
Speaker 1: they watched and rated what they found. People with a
Speaker 1: pencil in their mouth, we're rating things less funny. The
Speaker 1: reason is because of you're talking about this mirroring. Is
Speaker 1: you know your mirror neurons. You're you're watching something and
Speaker 1: there's a really deep connection to mirroring other people's behaviors.
Speaker 1: So when you're watching something that's funny, you're going to
Speaker 1: start to smile, you start get to engage those muscles.
Speaker 1: When those muscles are inhibited, whether it's a pencil or
Speaker 1: botox injections, by the way, you're less able to empathize.
Speaker 1: So again you've got comedy is something which is you
Speaker 1: know this this uh, this great unifier that really can
Speaker 1: allow people to better understand different perspectives and sort of
Speaker 1: you know. Also, do not trust a superhero who covers
Speaker 1: up his mouth like Batman. You can see his mouth
Speaker 1: so you can be able to he's going to be
Speaker 1: able to understand people more. But Spider Man, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. You What about a joker? He's
Speaker 1: smiling all the time. You can't tell what's going on, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's like botox in a way. Yeah, um, but
Speaker 1: there you go. That's that's that's a well. It makes
Speaker 1: me think too of laughter yoga, which you're opposed to, right,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely opposed to laughter. I have practice yoga for
Speaker 1: a number of years, but yes, laughter yoga. And my
Speaker 1: wife also is uh. I think she's at least on
Speaker 1: the fence about it or she doesn't like it, one
Speaker 1: or the other. But laughter yoga is where you where
Speaker 1: a yoga group will will we'll start laughing. And again
Speaker 1: it's fake at first. I mean it's very fake because
Speaker 1: there's generally not that much funny in a yoga class,
Speaker 1: unless you know somebody farts, right, but but because we
Speaker 1: can normally and I'm not going to talk about farts
Speaker 1: in in this podcast, but you know it's a human podcast.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um, yoga people will suddenly they'll start laughing.
Speaker 1: They'll be like ha ha ha ha, and then everybody's laughing,
Speaker 1: and then eventually the laughing laughter becomes real laughter because
Speaker 1: it's awful. That's why there's no other choice but to laugh.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know what I don't like about it.
Speaker 1: It's like tickling yourself. Yeah, it's just not it's weird
Speaker 1: and I don't like to be forced into tickling myself
Speaker 1: or laughter. I have to tell you just for the record, Okay,
Speaker 1: just just for the record, got you, And now you're
Speaker 1: not gonna make me take a tickling or tickling yoga class,
Speaker 1: a laughing yoga class. But just should started kick it off?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, hey, um, I guess it's time for
Speaker 1: listener mail hull. The first thing I'm actually going to
Speaker 1: hit here is not really listener mail per se, but
Speaker 1: I listener feedback. Well, well that they haven't listened to
Speaker 1: the podcast yet, so I don't know. This is we're
Speaker 1: really playing with causality all right, mysterio. But since I've
Speaker 1: along with Holly Frey, one of our our tech editor here,
Speaker 1: I've started contributing to the main house stuff works Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook accounts, which are just how stuff works on Twitter,
Speaker 1: how stuff works on Facebook, and I'll label those with
Speaker 1: my name. But I was researching, we were researching for
Speaker 1: this podcast yesterday, so I decided to call out to
Speaker 1: the readers there. It's like, hey, guys, what are some
Speaker 1: words that you words or things that you find inherently funny?
Speaker 1: And that's so I'm gonna read a few of them. Uh, pigeonhole, bush, ugly, bald, nostril, nut, laugh, groin.
Speaker 1: I would like to add the groin itches is even funnier. Cheeks,
Speaker 1: Harry Duke, feces, chipmunk, milk, toast, male slot, pumpernickel, spoon, garbonzo.
Speaker 1: I think carbonzo is especially funny, and that it's such
Speaker 1: a it sounds really elegant for what it is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like just like a little I don't know, it
Speaker 1: seems like a character, like a Tom and Jerry character
Speaker 1: to me, Like, I don't know, hob nob Schnitzel. Schinzel
Speaker 1: is pretty funny. There is a Chnitzel. The German food
Speaker 1: is really big and hunts fill Alabama because of like
Speaker 1: the NASA there and German population that moved there after
Speaker 1: the war. And uh, and there there was actually was
Speaker 1: like a former dairy queen like fast food restaurant that
Speaker 1: had been turned into a fast food schnitzel restaurant. It's
Speaker 1: called the Schnitzel Farm. And they're like, that's a great
Speaker 1: combination of words right there. Uh, muck is another one
Speaker 1: that was suggested. Banana poop, moose and moist. Is ointment
Speaker 1: just awkward or is it funny? Ointment is funny? Okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a violation, right awkward? Kume quiet is also pretty funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good ones there. Uh. We should
Speaker 1: probably hear from people to about what they think is
Speaker 1: the funniest words. Uh, yeah that they've heard. Yeah that
Speaker 1: I would be Yeah, if I would, I would read
Speaker 1: one more list of of of words after you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of podcasts. Yeah, um, well, let's read one
Speaker 1: one quick listener mail before we close it out. Here
Speaker 1: an actual listener mail. Eric writes then and says, uh,
Speaker 1: your in your intro to your Dad's podcast, we did
Speaker 1: a Dad's of The Animal Kingdom episode for Claud's Day. Um,
Speaker 1: you made me think of this joke. I hope you
Speaker 1: like it. So this is very timely beca this joke. Right.
Speaker 1: A dog walks into a bar in Texas with a
Speaker 1: heavy bandage on his foot. The bartender, played by Randy Jackson, says, yo, dog,
Speaker 1: what's up? The dog replies, I'm looking for the man
Speaker 1: who shot my paw. Ah, Eric, I hope you liked it.
Speaker 1: If not us, If not, say so, I'll send you
Speaker 1: no more jokes. No, no, send them them. But I can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, that made me kind of, that made
Speaker 1: me GoF, But still I love it. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: like a that's a weird thing. It's like the jokes
Speaker 1: that I generally don't get to hear, actual joke jokes
Speaker 1: unless they're really bad jokes. Like those are the Those
Speaker 1: are the jokes actually want to hear. They're really cringe
Speaker 1: worthy bad jokes. Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. I have
Speaker 1: to say I have a soft spot my heart for
Speaker 1: John Riggles because awful if he is he really is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but anyway, that's he's a really nice man in life.
Speaker 1: He's not, he's not he's not my dad. Long story,
Speaker 1: but my dad had dinner with him and he said
Speaker 1: it was it's like, you know, getting grilled, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I roasted. I love the bid where he talks about
Speaker 1: the night Frank Sinatra saved his life. Oh, I've not
Speaker 1: heard that. Well, he was. He was doing the stand
Speaker 1: up bit and this was played back in the day,
Speaker 1: you know, the rat pack days though, and U and
Speaker 1: he sees Frank is sitting there with his cronies, you know,
Speaker 1: on the front front row. So Don rickles as an
Speaker 1: insult comedian, so he cares into Frank a little bit
Speaker 1: and uh, and he says, and you know, he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess he'll have he'll be a good sport,
Speaker 1: don't know, tear into about bit. So he makes fun
Speaker 1: and Frank a little bit. But after the show, Frank
Speaker 1: Sinatra ends up saving his life because some he goes
Speaker 1: out into the alley and these guys start just beating
Speaker 1: the crap out of him, and Frank Sinatra comes out
Speaker 1: and he's like, that's enough, boys, he's had enough, or
Speaker 1: that's good boys, he's had enough. Yeah, okay, So I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say mafia or anything or planned to have
Speaker 1: him beat up an alley or anything like that and
Speaker 1: then save life. But I'm sorry, Frank Sinatra. You know
Speaker 1: he had a couple of boys go out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, that's that's why it's funny, because he clearly
Speaker 1: he had somebody beat up down racles. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts on humor, um what you
Speaker 1: find funny and and certainly just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how humor works? Uh, do let us know. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Twitter as blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: We're on there all the time. Yeah. And do you
Speaker 1: agree with this benign violation theory? Do you think that
Speaker 1: it is the grand unified theory of humor? Let us
Speaker 1: know at below the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.