Dr. Vida Stout

So they can afford to make a joke or two.

And sort of in a side project, I'm actually a practitioner where I do workshops with scientists to make their jokes funnier.

And I'm noticing it's the early career scientists and the grad students who respond to it the most, right?

Because what is humor but a way for us to bring our whole authentic self into this professional space?

And I think that's what is resonating with folks, right?

I want...

I want the norms to break so that I can just bring my whole self and not have to be like, I am perfect scientist person.

You know, my identity is the papers I've published.

You know, so I think there's a hunger for it, especially in early career scientists and grad students.

Yeah, exactly.

So I will say the humor literature is not very large.

I actually met like the best, my favorite humor researcher ever last week.

So I could have met an idol.

And so the number of humor researchers who study this psychology and this impact is going to be like five in the country.

And so there's not a ton of evidence.

A lot of it's done in teaching contexts.

And so there's a lot of papers that say, yes, generally humor will make you more memorable, you know, especially if you can remember the joke.

It'll kind of link to a bit of a memory.

It's just like a story.

Like we remember things in little packages of stories.