![What's So Funny?- A scientific attempt to discover why we laugh.](https://cdn.magzter.com/1422886351/1723445392/articles/lwlzUVe9Z1723455381808/laugh-funny-brain-humor-smile-electronically-stimulating-laughter-circuit-cerebral-cortex-jokes-joke-teller-Wiseman-Gutierrez-Lenny-Bruce-Warrick-Research-Unithumor-theory.jpg)
One Saturday evening in late June, the master of ceremonies at the Ice House, a comedy club in Pasadena, California, told the audience that they were in for a special treat: Dr. Richard Wiseman, a British scientist who was on a quest to determine the world’s funniest joke, was going to come out and enlist the audience’s help. The m.c., Debi Gutierrez, would tell jokes that particularly appealed to Americans who had visited Wiseman’s humor Web site, and he would tell jokes favored by the British.
Wiseman bounded up and perched on a stool facing Gutierrez, a brassy woman in her early forties. “May I call you Richard?” she asked.
“You can call me what you want,” Wiseman said.
“Dr. Dick! ” she said. The audience whooped, and Wiseman offered a game smile. In a navy-blue T-shirt, khakis, and tortoise-rimmed glasses, with a Vandyke beard balancing his baldness, he looked like a particularly helpful store manager at the Gap. In fact, at the age of thirty-five, Wiseman—a professor at the University of Hertfordshire and the director of its Perrott-Warrick Research Unit—is Britain’s most recognizable psychologist, famous for such mass-participation experiments as determining whether people can most easily detect lies told on television, on the radio, or in print. (It’s on the radio.) Since last fall, he has been conducting a global humor study at, a Web site where visitors submit jokes and rate other people’s jokes on a five-point scale called, somewhat unrigorously, the Giggleometer. When the experiment began, Wiseman posed for publicity photographs wearing a lab coat and holding a clipboard as he scrutinized a student wearing a chicken suit who was crossing a road. One photographer shouted, “Could the guy playing the scientist move to the left?,” and Wiseman cried, “I am a scientist.”
Denne historien er fra August 19, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra August 19, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
![Drug of Choice - The natural world contains many billions of potential medications. The question is how to find the ones that work.](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1818953/4g3NsKO7n1725344270057/crp_medicine-AI-antibiotics-medicines-drugs-origins-drugs-from-Dirt-aloe-vera-morphine-codeine-Ozempic-sources-of-medicine-microbes-medicine-history-Jan-Burian-technology-bacterias-DNA-Robert-Boer-chemical-hardware.jpg)
Drug of Choice - The natural world contains many billions of potential medications. The question is how to find the ones that work.
AI. is transforming the way medicines are made. Bacteria produce numerous molecules that could become medicines, but most of them aren’t easily identified or synthesized with the technology that exists today. A small percentage of them, however, can be constructed by following instructions in the bacteria’s DNA. Burian helped me search the sequence for genes that looked familiar enough to be understandable but unfamiliar enough to produce novel compounds. We settled on a string of DNA that coded for seven linked amino acids, the same number found in vancomycin. Then Burian introduced me to Robert Boer, a synthetic chemist who would help me conjure our drug candidate.
![Screams from a Marriage](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/3zRgYYnN-1725881148238/SCREAMS-FROM-A-MARRIAGE.jpg)
Screams from a Marriage
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
![Fly with Me](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/dYeQQzK6j1725880676447/FLY-WITH-ME.jpg)
Fly with Me
The children’s books of Katherine Rundell.
![The Mystery of Pain](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/e8e1WRybK1725879059454/THE-MYSTERY-OF-PAIN.jpg)
The Mystery of Pain
Garth Greenwell’s novel of extreme affliction and ordinary happiness.
![The Show Must Go On](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/8Ifks8k251725878208364/THE-SHOW-MUST-GO-ON.jpg)
The Show Must Go On
What if Ronald Reagan’ Presidency never really ended?
![LAST COFFEEHOUSE ON TRAVIS](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/2arIF1NQM1725877039050/LAST-COFFEEHOUSE-ON-TRAVIS.jpg)
LAST COFFEEHOUSE ON TRAVIS
For a few months, I stayed with my aunt's friend in Midtown, back when she could still afford to live there.
![Tales from the New World](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/FUEtmPGZg1725876059710/TALES-FROM-THE-NEW-WORLD.jpg)
Tales from the New World
The novelist Richard Powers considers our changing earth.
![Land of the Flea](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/xk--ld-TU1725873820810/LAND-OF-THE-FLEA.jpg)
Land of the Flea
What America 1s buying and selling.
![The Dark Time](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/V6UjUCdK01725867416552/THE-DARK-TIME.jpg)
The Dark Time
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
![The Post-Moral Age](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/6J5KQks7M1725866971231/THE-POSTMORAL-AGE.jpg)
The Post-Moral Age
If conscience is merely a biological artifact, must we give up on goodness?