Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Broadcasting intimate details and useless information from an undisclosed location in New York City. The Last Show with David Cooper You'd think a charming chemist would drop this bomb. I would tell you a joke about sodium, but nah. Seriously, nah. Scientists don't tell jokes all that often.
And when they do and they try during an academic conference, people mostly respond with awkward, polite chuckles. Are scientists not funny? Or are they just not trying to be funny? That is one of the questions we'll answer here with Dr. Vida Stout, an educator, an improv comedian, an occasional scientist, and someone who, for inexplicable reasons, did research into funny scientists.
I'm sure we'll find out what those reasons are. Vida, welcome to the show.
Hi, David. It's great to be here.
So what made you so interested into how scientists incorporate humor into, I don't know, their formal, their academic, their conferences, speeches like this?
So I guess this is the lore of the paper is all of us on the paper are bat researchers. And so we were at the International Bat Research Conference in Austin, Texas, you know, so many years ago. And I should have been there. being good, taking notes on the bat science. But I started to get a little sleepy, a little bored. And I had just taken like a ethnographic field methods class.
And I was like, I'm going to try out my new methods.
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Chapter 2: Why don't scientists tell more jokes at conferences?
And I start taking copious notes on the keynote speakers jokes instead of the bat science. And I'm evaluating them very like sassily and rude in the margins, like that did not land. And I'm like writing these direct quotes. And Stefano, the collaborator on this paper, happened coincidentally to be sitting next to me. We'd never met before. Read over my shoulders and saw the notes I was taking.
He was like, what are you doing? And that is the conversation that sparked this paper. And so all of us on the paper were at that conference that day or that week. And so we spent the next week kind of flushing out these ideas. I continued my insane qualitative notes and we kind of created this data sheet and this paper was born.
I wonder if the person who was looking over your shoulder was like, is Vida doing something inappropriate? And you're like, no, no, no, I'm doing research. I'm doing research, I swear. Okay, so what did you look at? Did you look at conference talks? Did you look at class presentations? What kinds of public speaking were you expecting jokes from scientists?
Well, this was all at conference talks. And I think it was because I love conferences generally, like the socialization part. But, you know, I have a hard time sitting still and listening to boring talks.
In fact, I have this, someone took a photo of me really embarrassingly, like completely asleep, like drooling, like a crunched up neck at a conference falling asleep because the talksters can be so, so boring. And so I guess when this particular keynote speaker was making jokes, I noticed from my comedian brain, noticed this palpable shift in the room energetically.
I sort of felt it like almost like a group lean forward. I was like, whoa, that's actually really interesting. And I just got on some soapbox, basically, that I believe that scientists should be making jokes. Admit them to keep me engaged because I am not listening if you're not making jokes.
Yeah. And when you're investigating something deep and serious, like exploding stars or strange bacteria or the fate of the universe, like that's the best opportunity for humor.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Dr. Vida Stout to study humor in science?
It seems like a lost opportunity.
Yeah. And like, honestly, humor comes from lived experience, right? And scientists have had incredibly interesting lives. Think of their fieldwork that they've done. They've gone to remote places. They've worked with, you know, weird animals. I'm a biologist, so hence that's where my mind is thinking. But like they've had incredible lived experiences that most people have and don't have.
And I think that is an incredible mine for comedy to like sort of bring that to life.
So let's break it down. Like what percentage of scientific conference speakers are actually even attempting humor at all? What percentage is just completely squandering the opportunity?
So it's a little higher. The humor attempts was a little higher than you would expect. We found about roughly 60% of people attempted at least one joke. Most of them were not successful, but at least we recorded at least one joke attempt in roughly 60% of talks, whereas 41% of talks, we had no joke attempts recorded.
Now you mentioned just trying and they might not have been successful. Do you have a measure on how many scientists tried a joke at a conference and actually got at least one laugh other than you giggling to yourself, taking notes, being like, that wasn't funny at all. And that's funny to me.
Because this sounds weird. We kind of measured almost like a laugh-o-meter, like roughly what percentage of the room was laughing. So these small attempts were earning light chuckles. So would you call it success or like polite awkwardness? I don't know what you would call it.
Probably. I know when people laugh at my jokes, they're just being polite. So yes, that's probably just polite.
So very, very few speakers then earned this large room laugh. I think very few of the joke attempts, something like 9%, got big laughs or even less than that. It was pretty infrequent when the whole room would erupt in laughter.
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Chapter 4: How do scientists perceive humor during presentations?
I was just collecting more data at a conference this week, and that's what I'm seeing. Right. It's like jokes could land more if we gave them the space to land, even in these audiences that aren't even expecting to laugh. Because, yes, you're fighting against that, too. Right. The norms of the space.
But I think it's about more about signaling than about the joke quality, because in general, we're desperate to laugh.
So I should crack a terrible science joke and then just scream at the audience and say, laugh. Is that is that a good stare at them until they laugh? Well, Vida, I've enjoyed chatting with you about your research. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks, David. I am here with Dr. Vida Stout. They are an educator, improv comedian and occasional scientist.
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