[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF NASSER: Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. A few months back, I got an email from the ever effervescent Wendy Zukerman, who hosts the podcast Science Vs.—some of you might know it—and she invited me on her show. Now if you don't know the show, every episode they take a subject, could be—I don't know, like, intermittent fasting or menopause, or I think they did one on ghosts. They'll just pick a topic, and then they'll dig up all the science they can find on it, and they'll kind of go over it. And they'll poke and prod it, how do we know what we know? What are a bunch of myths about this topic that we can bust? And then just in general, they try to make some sort of deeper sense of the thing. So you know whether to do it or not to do it or to avoid it or to be scared of it or not be scared of it or whatever. Like it helps you live your life. That's kind of the end.

LATIF: So anyway, when Wendy invited me, I was like, of course I'm gonna come on your show. She told me very little of what we were gonna do in advance. And so I just kind of showed up and I had a blast. It was strange and fun and funny, and I was like, okay, I want to share this with all the Radiolabbers, too. So here it is, an episode of Science Vs., featuring yours truly.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman, and you're listening to Science Vs. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against funnies. Today we are going on a ridiculous journey together. Today it's a quest. It's like we're gonna be heroes on this epic adventure. And at times, things might get a little rude, a little naughty, just in case there's kids listening.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But before we go any further, like all heroes' journeys, we're going to need a companion. You know, like Robin to Batman, Samwise Gamgee to Frodo Baggins, Buzz to Woody. And our companion today is a man who has gone on a great many scientific quests. He's traveled the world, put one foot in front of the other. I give you co-host of Radiolab, Latif Nasser. Hello!

LATIF: Hi! Thank you for having me. And I'm honored to be the Frodo to your Batman, or whatever is. I'm honored to be here.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So do you want to know our mission?

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay. We're gonna find the funniest joke in the world.

LATIF: Wow, that sounds dangerous!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Wow. I know. I know it sounds dangerous. It sounds big. But I'm gonna keep it safe. I'm gonna keep it safe. And you might be thinking, why? Why are we doing this? So I wanted to tell you the origin story to this heroes' journey. Okay. Right. And it doesn't get much bigger than this. So the other day I was feeling a little bit sad. I wanted a little pick me up, so I went to google the world's funniest joke.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And you know what I got?

LATIF: What?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It was trash. It was absolute trash.

LATIF: Sure.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Like I'm— you know, did you hear about the rancher who had 97 cows in his field? When he rounded them up, he had a hundred.

LATIF: Oh, that was not even—that's—that's real bad. Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It's—I kept ...

LATIF: That's solemn. Like, you could tell that at a funeral.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: I was like, this is making me feel worse. So I kept trying different search terms, and then I got crap like this: what has many keys but can't open a single lock?

LATIF: What has many keys but can't open a single lock?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: A piano.

LATIF: Yeah. I mean that—to me, that's not a joke. That's like a riddle. Or like it makes sense.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: That's a riddle. It, like, belongs in Lord of the Rings, right? Like, it's like, that's not ...

LATIF: It's not a joke.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It's not a joke. It's not even close to a joke. And so I just thought we could do better. You know, using research and rigor, you and me, we could do better. We could find the best joke in the world.

LATIF: Okay. You know, there are other things that could cheer you up. Like, I mean, sugar, antidepressants, a hug.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: That's true.

LATIF: There's, like, a lot of other things that you could do, but just not to—I'm not judging your life or anything.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: No, no, that's—do you think googling the funniest joke probably wasn't, like, a long-term solution to my problems?

LATIF: Not a long-term solution to your problems. Yeah, that's basically where I'm coming from. [laughs]

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs] But I thought ...

LATIF: You thought it was.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Couldn't hurt. Okay, so to start us off, I wanted to know if it was even possible to find the funniest joke in the world.

LATIF: Yes. Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So I asked a bunch of comedians this very question.

LATIF: Okay, great.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So here are their answers. So this is what US comedian Tig Notaro ...

LATIF: Brilliant comedian.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes—said. She was not optimistic.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Do you think we can find this joke?

TIG NOTARO: Sure. Over and over and over again. Because it's gonna be different opinions.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: You know?

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And Takashi Wakasugi, who's from Japan, agreed with Tig, saying, you know, comedy is subjective. People have different opinions. That's why being a comic is so hard. And he said, you know, in many ways telling a joke, it's like having sex.

TAKASHI WAKASUGI: We wanna—we wanna make you feel better. We always do our best.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Right.

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

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs] Right.

TAKASHI WAKASUGI: And some people make noise if you like it, and some people don't make noise even though they enjoy it.

LATIF: Yeah, this is hard. This is hard.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah, it's hard, right? And then so I asked my very good friend who's an award-winning comic in Australia, Penny Greenhalgh. And I just, like, really thought I'd get a supportive answer here.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Do you think I can do it?

PENNY GREENHALGH: No. No.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Penny!

PENNY GREENHALGH: I think—I reckon you'll try your hardest.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Let's try again. Let's try again. That was good. Second take. Okay, so do you think I can do it?

PENNY GREENHALGH: Wendy, I'm your friend. And as your friend, I'm gonna be honest with you.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah.

PENNY GREENHALGH: I don't think you will.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Hmm. With friends like that?

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Latif, I could see your face dropping.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: You know, but I just want you to know that some comics were on Team Batman and Frodo, Team Wendy and Latif.

LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Like, here's what Malaysian comic Dr. Jason Leong said.

LATIF: Uh huh? Okay.

JASON LEONG: Wow. I suppose technically it's possible.

LATIF: I suppose technically it's possible. That's a ringing endorsement!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs] He even had a strategy for us. He said, get a few jokes, get a big enough sample size voting system going across the world. Thought we could do it. Emmy award-winner Loni Love, in fact, had so much optimism for us that she even gave us our first clue.

LONI LOVE: It's just something simple that people usually laugh at, and it's right there in front of your face, you know? It's right there and it's something that everybody can laugh at.

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

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes.

LATIF: And then this solution for the quest, like, is just go simple.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Go simple.

LATIF: Which I think is right. Yeah, I think that's right. Because, like, even if there's no such thing as the perfect joke, there is somewhere the joke that more of the eight billion people on planet Earth will laugh at than any other joke. Do you know what I mean?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: I think so. I think so. I think it. Yeah, that's right. Even if everyone in the world doesn't find it funny, it's still—it's still—it's helping lots of people.

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Put a smile on their face, you know?

LATIF: Yes! Yes. Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: There must be something.

LATIF: There's gotta be.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay. With this enthusiasm, with this mindset, our hunt for the funniest joke in the world begins.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And it's coming up just after this break.

ANNIE MCEWEN: All right, here I am, ready to—ready to do it. My name is Annie McEwan, and I am a senior producer at this show, which basically just means that I spend many hours banging my head against the computer screen. But lovingly banging. The best part of my job is creating an immersive scene so you can, like, see it in your mind and feel it in your heart.

ANNIE: And it doesn't even really matter what it is. It could be what it would be like to talk to a Neanderthal at a bar, or a black hole moving through the Earth. If it's done right, I can take you by the hand and lead you into this magical world that surprises you. If you enjoy venturing into these new worlds we create here at Radiolab, the best way to support us is by becoming a Lab member. To learn more about The Lab and our exclusive membership perks, go to Radiolab.org/join. That's Radiolab.org/join. And thank you.

LATIF: Latif here with Wendy Zukerman presenting Science Vs.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Welcome back. Today on the show, our biggest challenge yet: to find the funniest joke in the world! We're here with Latif Nasser. How are you feeling about our chances at this point?

LATIF: You know, not—I wouldn't bet for us, but I wouldn't bet against us.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: That is very ambiguous. That's great.

LATIF: [laughs]

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Do you have a joke to enter into our funniest joke competition?

LATIF: Okay, so this is the thing that my two year old said—this is, like, a few months ago, and it alternately makes me laugh and, like, kind of, like, horrifies me. Okay, so one day I was going out. He was sitting. He was playing, like, just by the door.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Mm-hmm.

LATIF: And I was going out, and I was like, "Okay, bud. Like, I'm going to take out the garbage." And he goes, "Why don't you take your face?"

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

LATIF: That was it. He, like, completely roasted me. Like, no—nothing. Nothing before it. Nothing that—like, it came out of nowhere. Why don't you take your face with the garbage? Because your face is garbage is what he's saying to me. My son, my own son, my own flesh and blood.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Take your face. Our first entry into the world's funniest joke competition. Okay, but now we have our first scientific guest here, and she is gonna set the stakes to tell us how important our quest is, our quest to find the funniest joke in the world. So meet Sophie Scott.

SOPHIE SCOTT: I'm a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: This fancy person, as part of her work, researches laughter. And she told me that there is a gaggle—or giggle—of research out there that shows why laughing matters. So what's curious is that we as humans, we're not the only animals to laugh. Rats do a kind of playful vocalization, that is if you tickle them just right.

SOPHIE SCOTT: What you need to do to tickle a rat is you need to tickle them on the nape of the neck. That's where they're really ticklish.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

SOPHIE SCOTT: So just sort of between the shoulder blades.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Primates like chimps do a laugh.

LATIF: Hmm!

SOPHIE SCOTT: Chimpanzees laugh. It sounds very like our laughter. It's like a kind of "Chee chee chee" sound.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: This is an actual chimp laughing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: chimpanzee laughing]

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Isn't her impersonation very good?

LATIF: She did great! Yeah. Yeah, that was spot on.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But even though there are other creatures out there that do a kind of laugh, there are things that are very special about our human laughter. And one of them is this.

SOPHIE SCOTT: Humans laugh loud. We laugh to be heard. We broadcast our laughter.

LATIF: What a weird, sort of obnoxious thing. Like, for us humans, like, we're the loud laughers of the animal kingdom. Like, what a weird thing.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: I'm desperately trying to laugh quietly right now at this moment.

LATIF: [laughs] But, like, imagine like on Noah's Ark or whatever. It's like we're the ones laughing, and everyone else was like, "Oh, God. Like, we get it. Like, you're having fun."

WENDY ZUKERMAN: We're all having fun just going "chee chee chee."

LATIF: That's right. Right. We're just doing it breathy and over here and to ourselves. And you're just, like, really are rubbing it in.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes. Yes. But I mean, that is exactly what we think the evolutionary purpose of this is is to, like, show that we are laughing and possibly to get others laughing too, to bring joy. Because we're the only animals, as far as science knows, that have contagious laughter. So if I start laughing, you're more likely to start laughing. We're way more likely to laugh when other people are around versus when we're alone.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And Sophie has found that when it comes to jokes, the power of laughter is so strong that it can turn a terrible joke into a funnier joke. So she actually did this study where she got some jokes.

SOPHIE SCOTT: We took real stinkers, like, what's the best day for cooking? Friday.

LATIF: Oh, yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So she got these terrible—these stinkers, as she puts it, these terrible jokes. And she found that just by adding a laugh, people would rate these stinkers as funnier.

LATIF: Huh!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And for Sophie, this, like, all shows that laughter is playing this, like, really important role in connecting people.

SOPHIE SCOTT: So there really is something very basic about the ability of laughter, perhaps to jump the gaps between humans.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Latif, if we could find a joke to get the whole world laughing, I mean, we'd be Nobel Prize winners, or at least like Ignoble Prize winners.

LATIF: Yes.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay, so with that in mind, with the stakes truly set for this quest ...

LATIF: Yep. Yep.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Now we've just gotta find this joke.

LATIF: Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But where to start?

LATIF: Where to start?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So I kept pottering around on the internet, even though that did not give me the funniest joke. But it did bring me to this fellow, Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University at Hertfordshire in the UK.

LATIF: Okay. Notoriously funny university. It's very well known.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And it's shire. Shire for our quest!

LATIF: Oh, that's right. Okay, great. Okay, I'm in. I'm in.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So in the early 2000s, Richard was asked to come up with this big science public project. It was for a fancy British science association, and he cannot think of anything. But as he's walking through the doors of the meeting ...

RICHARD WISEMAN: This idea just popped into my head, which was the search for the world's funniest joke.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Twinsies!

LATIF: Twinsies.

RICHARD WISEMAN: And that was my pitch. I simply sat down and said, "We're going to search the world's funniest joke." And they went, "That's a great idea! Let's do that." Which I didn't expect them to say, to be honest.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: This is—well, this is quite funny because ...

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So I explained our situation.

LATIF: Our situation. Of course. Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: I pitched my editor that we're gonna find the world's funniest joke. And I didn't know how to do this. I mean, now all we have, I guess, is some, like, crappy joke about pianos and keys.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: You know, but that's not funny.

RICHARD WISEMAN: No, that's not the funniest joke in the world. Wouldn't it be sad if that was the funniest joke in the world? If everyone went, "Oh, my God! It's the piano joke, we love that!"

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs] Exactly.

RICHARD WISEMAN: So—exactly. Well, the experience that you had pitching to your editor was the one that I had all those years ago.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes.

RICHARD WISEMAN: So I go back to the team at the University of Hertfordshire. I said, "We're gonna find the world's funniest joke." And they went, "Great. How are we gonna do that?" And I said, "I've got no idea. I didn't get that far in the pitch. We've got nothing, basically."

LATIF: Okay. Very relatable. I like this guy a lot, although I have no idea what he's gonna do next.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay. Well, then they come up with a plan, a radical plan.

LATIF: Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Radical for the 2000s.

RICHARD WISEMAN: We decided people would come onto the internet, the newly-formed internet. They would—they would type in their favorite joke and submit it, and they would rate the jokes submitted by others.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Ah-hah!

RICHARD WISEMAN: And nowadays you go, well, of course you could do that. You could do it with people all over the world. But back then, there wasn't a way of collecting data via the web.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Hmm. Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So Richard's team actually has to develop a website from scratch that could do all this, where people could come online, submit jokes, or they'd be given different jokes and then they would rate how funny they are. So they get this website done, and now they just need to get some publicity, because this whole experiment is hinging on lots of people going onto the website. Like, a big enough sample size to submit jokes and rate them.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But it turns out getting publicity was not a problem, because once news outlets around the world found out about this competition, they lapped it up.

RICHARD WISEMAN: And it goes viral. It goes all over the world that scientists are searching for the world's funniest joke.

[NEWS CLIP: What makes one person laugh could make the next person cringe.]

[NEWS CLIP: The search is now on to find the world's funniest joke.]

RICHARD WISEMAN: There was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of pressure. My goodness, he's going to find the world's funniest joke.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And so people rated the jokes on a gigalometer?

RICHARD WISEMAN: Yeah, we refer to it as a Gigalometer.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: A gigalometer. Gigalometer.

RICHARD WISEMAN: Gigalometer. And it was very scientific. It had five ratings on it from not very funny, which would be the piano joke would be not very funny, through to moderately funny and then on to absolutely hilarious.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay, so the ranking is one to five.

LATIF: Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Totally working. People are coming onto the site in droves.

LATIF: Great.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Very early on, people start putting dirty jokes onto the website, of course.

LATIF: Okay. But he has to be okay with that. No? He's not?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: No! So in this experiment, they actually removed the dirty jokes because this was a big family experiment, unlike ...

LATIF: Okay. Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: ... Science Vs.

LATIF: Okay. Oh. Oh, got it. So you're doing—you're doing all the way. All the way. All the jokes.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: We could do all—yeah, but Richard removes—removes the rude jokes.

LATIF: Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But then as the competition is trucking along ...

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: ... one day, Richard checks in with the team, and he sees this joke that would send him—and now us—on a rather interesting path.

LATIF: Mm-hmm.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Almost like the endless stairs to cross into Mordor.

LATIF: Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay, so here's the joke.

RICHARD WISEMAN: Two cows in a field. One turns to the other and says, "Moo." And the other one says. "Oh, I was gonna say that."

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Not bad. Not bad.

RICHARD WISEMAN: Oh, that's an old joke. Old joke. That's probably a two or a three on the gigalometer.

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree that's two or three.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So clearly that's not gonna be the winner of either Richard's competition or ours. But it did make Richard think, wait a sec, could we do an experiment within an experiment?

LATIF: Huh.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So Richard wonders, like, what if we tried out different versions of this cow joke by switching up the animals? And could this tell us something deeper about why one joke is funny and one joke isn't?

LATIF: Oh, yeah!

RICHARD WISEMAN: So you could have two lions. One turns to the other and roars, and the other says "I was gonna say that."

LATIF: Less funny. That's less funny. Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Okay. So other ones they tried: two birds going cheep, cheep. Two ducks. One says quack. Then there's two dogs. Woof, woof. I was gonna say that.

LATIF: No, that's not funny. No, maybe that's funny. Maybe that's funny, but not because of the noise, but because dogs are so relatable.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Mmm, okay. So Richard puts a bunch of these jokes into the database. When people come on, they might be randomly given one of those jokes. So which—which do you think is the funniest?

LATIF: Quack, quack.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes.

LATIF: It was?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: That was the winner.

LATIF: Damn! Okay.

RICHARD WISEMAN: Two ducks. One says quack and the other one says, "I was gonna say that."

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So the big question is why is duck quacking so funny?

LATIF: Okay. And why?

RICHARD WISEMAN: And it turned out that 'ducks' and 'quack' are funny words.

LATIF: Yeah!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And so what is it about 'duck' and 'quack?' Why are they funny? And the answer lies in this fabulously named paper, "Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny?"

LATIF: Nice!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And here's what they did. They used this survey data where hundreds of people had been asked to rate the funniness of thousands of English words.

LATIF: Mm-hmm.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And they used basically the equivalent of the gigalometer. So you want to play?

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah.

LATIF: Definitely.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Juju?

LATIF: Juju is funny. Yeah. Juju.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Chauffeur.

LATIF: Chauffeur?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Chauffeur.

LATIF: Not funny.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Orgy.

LATIF: Orgy. Not funny.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Holder.

LATIF: Holder?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs] Holder.

LATIF: Not funny. Holder is the least funny word you've said.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]I don't know why that makes me laugh so much.

LATIF: [laughs]

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It's such a dumb thing to ...

LATIF: No, because 'holder' is so functional.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, you know, you basically picked the right order. So of the words I gave you, 'juju' was ranked as the highest, the funniest word. And then 'orgy,' which in this study, it was actually considered pretty funny. 'Chauffeur' came after that. And 'holder,' not funny at all.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So the researchers then pored over this data set to create an algorithm of funny words that they then applied to more than 45,000 English words. And I actually have the Excel spreadsheet right here if you want to throw out any words.

LATIF: Oh, wow! Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Um, I'm almost more curious, what are the words at the very bottom of the list?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay. Very interestingly, I—the least funny word according to this study is 'harassment.'

LATIF: 'Harassment.' That—that makes me want to make a joke where the punchline is 'harassment!' Doesn't it?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs] I know, right? So the researchers, like, really swam in that data to try and see patterns as to what is funny and what is not. And one thing that really came up is that certain sounds are funny, like ...

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: K.

RICHARD WISEMAN: Anything with a hard K. So 'clown' and 'duck' and 'quack.'

LATIF: 'Duck' and 'quack.' Both of them have a K!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Right? And it's funny because this comedy K—so there's an episode of the Simpsons about it. Like, comedians know about this. There's a 30 Rock has a joke about it.

LATIF: Oh, really?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, 30 Rock: Last year, Jenna accused me of trying to destroy her because her lines didn't have any K sounds, which she thinks is the funniest sound.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, 30 Rock: Oh, my God! My cousin Carl crashed his car, and now he's in a coma at the Kendall Clinic.]

LATIF: That was good!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Now, as far as I could tell, no one has repeated this experiment in a non-English language.

LATIF: Hmm.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And because we're looking for the funniest joke in the world ...

LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: ... I wanted to ask comics about this in other languages. So we're kind of stuck with anecdotes, unfortunately. But I asked Egyptian comic Mohammed Magdi what is a funny word in Arabic? And this is what he said.

MOHAMMED MAGDI: I think the word for shell, like the shell that you find on the beach, is quite funny. It's called 'kawka.'

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Kawka?

MOHAMMED MAGDI: Yeah, yeah. So if you just ...

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Two Ks.

MOHAMMED MAGDI: Yeah, two Ks. There you go. Actually, you're right. Oh, my God! Science does work!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

MOHAMMED MAGDI: What?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So other sounds in English that are funny ...

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Oo. Oo sounds. So like booby. Woop.

LATIF: Booby. Yeah, sure.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: As well as words ending in Y and 'le,' so like giggle and waddle are also funny.

LATIF: Yeah. Huh.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: As a general rule, letters and sounds that aren't very common tend to rate as funnier. So 'kuh' sound is pretty rare. And also, like, if you have this, like, weird collection of sounds in a word, that tends to be funny. So I talked about this with comedian Tig Notaro. So we were talking about funny words and she said a co-host on her podcast Handsome said this one day.

TIG NOTARO: Bulbous frog. And I couldn't move on. I said, "I'm sorry, we have to go back. What do you—what do you mean a bulbous frog?" Also, the delivery of this word, it kept like—"Yes. And the bulbous frog. And it was so bulbous." And I was like, "Stop saying that word!" Like, it made me sick to my stomach. But I also recognized it as a funny word.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes. And according to the "Wriggly Squiffy" paper, 'bulbous' does rank pretty high.

LATIF: All right. Huh? Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So I kept looking for clues in other languages as to what words might be funny.

LATIF: So smart. So smart.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So I talked to Indian comic Urooj Ashfaq about this. She won the best newcomer at Edinburgh last year. She speaks Hindi. She's performed all over India. And she told me that there are a few words that often get a laugh.

UROOJ ASHFAQ: There's this word called 'Chinchpokli,' which is ...

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah, that's very funny!

UROOJ ASHFAQ: It's really funny. It's 'Chinchpokli.' It's a place.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It's a place.

UROOJ ASHFAQ: Chinchpokli. Chinchpokli. And every time someone says it ...

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It does have a K, right? Chinchpokli.

UROOJ ASHFAQ: Yes, you're right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But that's not why it's funny, right?

UROOJ ASHFAQ: I don't. Maybe it's—it's the 'chinch.'

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes!

UROOJ ASHFAQ: It's so thin. And then the pokli is so wide, and you're like, "Why did you put that together?" Chinchpokili.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Chinchpokli.

UROOJ ASHFAQ: Chinchpokli.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Chinchpokli. Right?

LATIF: Oh, so good! Satisfying.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It's a neighborhood in Mumbai. Now, what makes words funny isn't just their sounds, it's also their meanings. So in English, the study found that rude words, words about body parts and bodily functions, insult words also rate as funny.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So this thing with insulting words being funny, it seems to track in India too. So Urooj told me about—about one more. And we're about to get a little bit rude here.

LATIF: Great.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Is 'oo' funny in India?

UROOJ ASHFAQ: 'Oo' is funny. I think, 'oo' is funny. 'Gu.' Oh my God, the word 'gu' is so funny. And 'gu' basically means 'shit.' And so the 'eat shit' in Hindi is 'guka.'

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Guka.

UROOJ ASHFAQ: And that usually gets a laugh.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So after the break, we're gonna hear the winner of Richard's experiment. And will we find the funniest joke in the world?

LATIF: Who knows? Who knows? Could go either way. Could go either way here.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: We're back on our grand quest to find the funniest joke in the world. I'm your dungeon master and my paladin is Latif Nasser. Hello.

LATIF: Hi!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So as we're on this journey for the funniest joke in the world, one potential hiccup in our plan is if different countries and cultures have vastly different senses of humor. And this is something you hear talked about. Like, even when I was living in New York, people would like to talk about how Australians have such a different sense of humor to Americans. And so I looked into the research on this.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And one big study published a few years ago that had done surveys on 28 countries, you know, thousands and thousands of people.

LATIF: Uh-huh?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And they did find, like, people from Indonesia and Japan tended to use self-disparaging humor, so making fun of themselves. While Russia and Estonia scored high on aggressive humor that might involve belittling or teasing others.

LATIF: Hmm.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So there are some differences. But the thing is for all these, like, gulfs that scientific papers like to highlight, the research paper ultimately concluded that there are, quote, "More similarities than differences across the countries."

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah, I believe that. I believe that. Yeah, I think that's right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah. Yeah. And some of the comedians that I spoke to about, you know, finding the funniest joke in the world said that as long as we make sure our joke isn't—it doesn't have, like, very specific cultural references in it, like talking about the politics of a specific country or town or whatever.

LATIF: Yeah.

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

LATIF: Which is why bodies are so—yeah. Bodies work. Bodies, animals.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah, I like that. I like that. So now let's fast forward to the end of Richard Wiseman's experiment. A year has passed. He's gotten 40,000 jokes, hundreds of thousands of ratings from 70 countries.

LATIF: Mm-hmm!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And Richard told me that by the end of the experiment, it was really clear that this competition was over.

RICHARD WISEMAN: You could see the same jokes coming in again and again. If I read what's brown and sticky? A stick.

LATIF: Oh, yeah.

RICHARD WISEMAN: If I read that one more time. Every morning, three or four people had put that in.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: How was it? Did it rate well?

RICHARD WISEMAN: No! No, no, it was always down there with pianos.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

RICHARD WISEMAN: It was—it never did well.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And funnily enough, 20 years later, we did a call out on social media, and this brown and sticky joke came up over and over again.

LATIF: Oh, man! Wow!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Okay. So Latif, are you ready to hear the winner of Richard's competition?

LATIF: Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Do you want to do a little drum roll, by the way?

[drumming on table]

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Bing!

RICHARD WISEMAN: There are two hunters out in the woods. One of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing. His eyes are glazed. His friend whips out his phone, calls the emergency services. He says, "My friend is dead. What can I do?" The operator says, "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make certain he's dead." There's a silence, then a gunshot. And then the guy's back on the phone. He says, "Okay, now what?"

LATIF: [laughs] That was good. That was good. I liked it.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So I told it to a bunch of our comedians.

LATIF: Okay.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: To rather mixed reviews.

LATIF: Okay, okay, okay. Let's hear it.

TAKASHI WAGASUKI: [laughs] That's a—that's a great joke.

LONI LOVE: That's dumb.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

PENNY GREENHALGH: That's the winner?

JASON LEONG: Really? Really?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: If you had, like, a A-plus funniest joke in the world, F, a bad joke. What are you rating it?

JASON LEONG: I will give it—I will give it a passing grade. It passes as a joke.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Wow. It passes as a joke. Like, that's where it gets. You were aware.

JASON LEONG: It's a joke. Well done, but try harder. You know what I mean?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: That last harsh critique is comedian Jason Leong. I was on his side. So when Richard first told me this hunter joke, this was my reaction.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [yelling] What? How is that the funniest joke in the world?

LATIF: Oh, wow!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Why did you—you didn't mind it. You don't mind it.

LATIF: I didn't mind it. I mean, maybe I'm a cheap laugh. It's kind of wholesome, even though it's about death—murder. It's like a wholesome murder joke, you know? It's funny.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: I asked Richard what he thought about it.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: What did you—how did you feel when your colleagues came to you and were like, "This is the winner," and you read that? What went through your mind?

RICHARD WISEMAN: Horror. Because I knew I would have to go on radio and television and tell that joke as the world's funniest joke. And I knew it wasn't funny. And it was just—we must have done 50 interviews that year when that came out. And each time you sort of grind—it's a long joke as well. It's not a short joke. You grind through this joke knowing it's not funny, having just told everyone that we found the world's funniest joke. It was living hell. After a while, I just refused to tell it.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But what's funny is that, like, even though it didn't make me laugh and Richard doesn't really like it, like, when you look at the scientific theories of humor, this hunter joke actually ticks a lot of boxes. Okay, so let's take a look at these scientific theories of humor.

LATIF: Okay, great.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: One of the biggest theories of humor is that you need a surprise. So perhaps something incongruous. So here's comedian Loni Love on this.

LONI LOVE: It's something that you didn't expect. That's what makes you laugh. Because your mind is thinking one way, and you go a whole 'nother corner or avenue. That is what makes people laugh. And that's the science of the joke.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So Richard gave me an example of this, which I actually quite like as a joke.

LATIF: Okay?

RICHARD WISEMAN: Two fish in a tank. One turns to the other and says, "Do you know how to drive this?"

LATIF: Love it. Love it.

RICHARD WISEMAN: So we have fish and a tank. We think it's a fish tank, and then we find out they're in an army tank. That's incongruous. It surprises us. We laugh.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So one paper called this 'conceptual bifurcation,' which is that moment where you realize that something that you thought belonged to just one category—a tank is something that only a fish would hang out in—actually belongs to two categories. An army tank, too. Ha, ha. And so the hunter joke obviously has this as well, the moment you realize, first, let's make certain he's dead, actually has two meanings, and then it's a funny surprise.

LATIF: Right. That was a funny joke. Yeah. Also conceptual bifurcation, I feel like both of those words would rank very low on your spreadsheet.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

LATIF: That's like a very unfunny—that's like the unfunniest phrase you could find to describe a joke.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah, it's like barely above 'harassment.'

LATIF: Right. Yeah. Yeah, completely.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Studies have actually put people into brain scanners and presented them with jokes and found that certain areas associated with language get really, really excited when we hear these kinds of jokes. Which makes a lot of sense because there's a lot of brain work involved in putting these two concepts together for that beautiful a-ha moment.

LATIF: Right, Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Adam Conover of most famously, Adam Ruins Everything is also a stand up. And he says that this surprise can come in different forms. So it doesn't have to be that you were expecting a joke to go in one direction and then it goes somewhere else. It could be that someone explains something in a way that you never thought of before.

ADAM CONOVER: My own personal theory that I use to write jokes is that something is funny when a truth is combined with a surprise, when people have a shock of recognition that they did not expect. So, you know, the very classic joke is, you know, a piece of observational comedy. You know, have you ever noticed that airplane food is X, whatever it is? Right? And if you have, in fact noticed that, but no one has ever said that to you before, then you will likely laugh, right?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But surprise can't explain everything about comedy, because things can be surprising and not funny at all. And on the flip side, researchers found that even when there is no surprise, like in some studies people have been told a joke before, or even if they're asked, like, can you predict the punchline of this joke, people still find it funny and sometimes even funnier.

LATIF: Hmm!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And I told Tig Notaro the hunter joke, it was kind of funny because this was her reaction.

TIG NOTARO: Saw it coming, still found it amusing.

LATIF: Oh! Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So if there's more to a zinger than surprise, what else have we got? Superiority theory. So here's Richard on that.

RICHARD WISEMAN: A laugh is a kind of cry of superiority. You made somebody else look silly, or put them down and that you're going, "Yes! I'm better than them."

LATIF: That's so depressing. Actually, that's like a very depressing ...

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It is a very depressing form. And it does explain some jokes because, like, in so many cultures, there are these jokes about what some researchers call, like, the fool towns.

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So—or fool places. Like, so in Australia, if you start a joke with, like, two Tasmanians walk into a bar ...

LATIF: Got it. In Canada, it's Newfoundlanders. Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah, right? So in the UK, maybe they make fun of the Irish. In Ireland, maybe they make fun of the Kerrymen. In France, the Belgians.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: And it goes beyond time. So I was reading about this paper that said in ancient Greece, it was Abdera, the town of Abdera, you know ...

LATIF: Of course!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: The two Abderans, walk into a bar. And when it comes to the hunter joke, you could argue we feel superior to the stupid hunter.

LATIF: It just does make us feel so petty. Like, we're just, like, so petty and insecure. Like, we need something to feel bigger than.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yeah, I really don't—I really don't think that's why I'm laughing at a lot of jokes. And it has been criticized a little bit recently.

LATIF: I mean, I'm not saying I'm not petty and insecure.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

LATIF: But I like to think there's more to it than that.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: I think so too. So then this last scientific theory of humor I wanna walk through just quickly is that—is that a lot of humor is triggered by these potentially threatening or bad situations, and then we laugh to release tension. So the hunter joke ticks that off.

LATIF: Yeah. It's like, oh, there's a little bubble of tension here. Pop it! Like, okay, great. We're good. We're good, right?

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Yes. And even though there's not a lot of studies testing this theory of humor, Richard said that just from reading, like, thousands of jokes in his experiment, it seemed to sort of be at the heart of why a lot of them were funny.

RICHARD WISEMAN: It's not chance that a lot of jokes involve people experiencing stuff that makes us worried.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Right. And then as, like—as an interesting tidbit, more recently, researchers have kind of added to this saying that you can't just have tension or what they call a violation. They say you ultimately need to feel safe. So the violation in a joke has to be benign. It's called the benign violation theory. And if you think of like a classic funniest home video show where someone falls on their face, that's like a violation, it's a bit dangerous. But then it's safe. Like, the person got up, was fine and like, for some reason sent their snafu to, like, a '90s TV channel.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: But if they—if they didn't get up and they just, like, were dead.

LATIF: Yeah. Right. That's not funny. We're not laughing at that anymore.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: So to go back to, like, the hunter joke, just for a second.

LATIF: Right.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Even though it ticks these scientific boxes like we talked about, it's not funny. And so I thought—or to me, any—I don't know. It can't be the funniest. It can't be the funniest.

LATIF: It's not the funniest.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: It's not funniest. And so I asked Richard, like, his experiment, it did the right thing. They got the sample size. They asked people, you know, in many countries around the world, so what went wrong? And here's what he said.

RICHARD WISEMAN: It was the joke that most people didn't hate. So you can look at any one group. You can look at men or women or young or old or Canadians, and there was always a joke that they thought was much, much funnier. But when you pulled the data, you got the average. And that's the average. It's the average joke. It's the kind of like, "Yes, right?"

WENDY ZUKERMAN: No, I think what I've learned from talking to you ...

RICHARD WISEMAN: Nothing. You've learned nothing.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Nothing! [laughs] Is that, yeah, where you went wrong was asking thousands and thousands of people for their opinion.

RICHARD WISEMAN: Where we went wrong was starting. That—all downhill from there.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: All right. So Latif, of all of the jokes that you've heard today, have we found your favorite?

LATIF: I'm very happy with 'take your face.'

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

LATIF: I still think that one's pretty good. "I'm going to take out the garbage. Take your face."

WENDY ZUKERMAN: The answer was hiding within us all along.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: We found your joke. We fulfilled our quest.

LATIF: Yeah.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: Thank you very much.

LATIF: Thank you!

WENDY ZUKERMAN: For coming on the show.

LATIF: Thank you. I feel lighter.

WENDY ZUKERMAN: [laughs]

WENDY ZUKERMAN: This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zukerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Joel Werner, Rose Rimler and Meryl Horn. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Sarah Baum. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bibi Hidaka, Emma Munger, So Wiley and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr. Andrew Farkas, Professor Penny MacDonald, Dr. Maggie Prenger. And a huge thank you to Professor Chris Westbury for sharing your amazing spreadsheet of the funniest words. Another big thanks to Lindsay Farber, Roland Campos, Lauren LoGiudice, Andrea Jones-Rooy, and the other comics that we spoke to at The Joke Lab. And in fact, all of the comics that we spoke to and couldn't fit into this episode. We really, really appreciate you and your time. Thanks to Ben Milam, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Stupid Old Studios, Paige Ransbury, the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.

LATIF: On the Radiolab side, we just want to say a big thank you to Wendy Zukerman and everyone at the Science Vs team, including former Radiolabber Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for letting us share this episode. We will be back next week, and until then my friends, I wish you luck finding ways to keep laughing. Have a good week.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm David and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Rebecca Laks, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Erica in Yonkers. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

 

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