[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is so fun. I love this.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: I'm sorry I had to hold, you know, the laugh when you were talking about rats chirping.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Yeah. But it's okay. You don't need to hold it back. You go ahead and hold it.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Well, it will be disturbing. Okay.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello, this is Joseph Scholz, and welcome to the Deep Culture Experience, where we explore the psychology of intercultural.
And I am here with podcast team member Sane Bosma. How are you, Sana?
[00:00:36] Speaker B: I'm so well, thank you, Joseph. It's so nice to be back here with you. And I've been looking so much forward to this ever since we first talked about the topic for today's episode.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yes. And that topic is humor across cultures.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: It was inspired by a conversation the team had at the end of episode 58. I remember that Leah was telling stories about cultural differences in humor. And I will never forget the fish in the bed story.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: And we will hear a bit more about that, but let's just listen back.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Norwegians and Filipinos have different sense of humor. Me and my Dutch friend thought that pranks would be a good way to tell jokes because we love doing pranks. So me and my Dutch friend, we put a fish, an unfried fish, a raw fish, in the bed of our Filipino friend just for fun.
Did not end well.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Oh, no, we didn't.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: We had to do like a whole making amends, apologizing sort of thing. Yeah.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Well, now we definitely have to do an episode about culture and humor.
Yeah.
And so we did, in fact, decide to do an episode on humor. And here we are. And the first thing that the team talked about was how humor can trip you up across cultures.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: I can see that at work. So with my Dutch colleagues, I can have a pretty dark sense of humor. For example, there's a cartoon. I think it's just hilarious. It's a confused man holding a phone. And then there is a recorded voice that says, you have reached the answering machine of the self help organization for Alzheimer patients. If you still remember what you wanted to talk about, please leave a message after the beep.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Oh, man, that is pretty dark.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: That's good, right?
My non Dutch colleagues actually seem to be shocked by that kind of thing.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Well, I have to say I can see why.
So we talked about how it can trip us up across cultures. But other questions came up too. Cognitive questions, like what makes something funny and what's happening in our brain?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: And I got interested in the evolutionary perspective, like, does humor exist in animals and what is its purpose?
[00:03:10] Speaker A: So in this episode, we will share the cool stuff we've learned. We will hear stories from the podcast team about how they navigate these cultural differences in humor. We'll hear more about Leah's fish in the bed adventure. But we'll also see what happens when you tickle a rat. We'll learn about the connection between humor and predictive processing and why that means humor often does. Doesn't travel that well.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: And that brings us to part one.
Are you kidding?
[00:03:47] Speaker A: So when we first had a conversation about doing a humor episode, I wasn't sure how deep this topic is, what we could say about it. But then right away you found a ton of research.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: I know. Leah and I really got into this topic and she sometimes posts on Instagram about it. And I just kept finding great articles.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: And I love the titles of some of these articles, like first they Scream, Then They Laugh. The cognitive intersection of humor and fear.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: And then another one I liked was the first joke exploring the evolutionary origins of humor.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: I don't even know why these serious articles sound so funny, but they do. Another one was Laughter bonding and biological evolution, and that was published in the European Journal of Humor Research. So we've got serious research in a funny sounding journal and then a systematic
[00:04:42] Speaker B: review of the brain mechanism of humor processing.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: And if that doesn't make you want to read an article, nothing will. So what I was thinking was a simple topic. Absolutely. Is not.
So where do we start?
One of the things that really interested me was why humans have humor.
For example, is there an evolutionary benefit?
So I was fascinated to learn that when you tickle rats, they chirp like giggling and that this helps us understand the evolutionary roots of humor.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: So this was actually discovered by the researcher Jaak Panksep. He was an Estonian American neuroscientist who is interested in the biology of emotion.
So he conducted famous experiments in which he tickled rats and recorded their vocalizations. I know.
So here's a YouTube clip about this from Scientific American.
Scientists knew rats loved to be tickled, especially on their backs and bellies. A tickled rat lets out tiny giggles too high for us to hear.
Special microphones captured the squeaks so they could be replayed in a lower register. Belly and back tickles elicited giggles galore.
Tail tickles not so much.
The rats will chase a researcher's hand for more and even frolic about in a newly described behavior called joy jumps.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: I just love the idea that a neuroscientist thought of tickling rats and recording them.
I did wonder. So they're calling these Vocalization giggles. But can we really call them giggles?
[00:06:45] Speaker B: So that's a really good question. There is also a lot of skepticism about Jaak Panksep's work at first, and for that same reason. So people said that he was anthropomorphizing, but the science has moved in this direction.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: So how do we know that these chirps are actually related to laughing or to humor?
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Rats are social mammals, and these chirps indicate positive states, so they seek out tickling. They even anticipate it. And so they chirp when the tickling hand approaches.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And it reminded me of how children love to be tickled.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: That's so true. So when you tickle them, rats chirp and children giggle.
The signals play and that the interaction is not a threat. Being tickled is a form of stimulation. It's unexpected, but not harmful.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: And this, for me, was an amazing idea, that the evolutionary roots of laughing are shared with rats.
And I looked it up, and we have a common ancestor with rats something like 90 million years ago.
So that means our tiny mammal ancestors may well have been giggling when they were hiding from dinosaurs.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: And we find it in primates as well. For example, chimpanzees produce laughter, like vocalizations when they are tickling, chasing, or mock fighting. So it signals play. It doesn't lead to aggression, and it even sounds similar to human laughter.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: So let's hear some primate laughter. This is from a BBC documentary about bonobos, a close relative to chimpanzees.
So what does this tell us about humor in humans?
[00:08:51] Speaker B: I think the takeaway is that humor is rooted in ancient neural systems for play and bonding.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: And as we were saying, children like to be tickled, and they also seem to go through stages of liking different kinds of humor. Ishita and I were talking about this, and we discovered that we each learned the same joke as children, even though she grew up in West Bengal, in India, and I grew up in California.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Okay, so you have to share it now.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Hey, I'm going to take my spaceship and fly to the sun. You'll burn up. No, I'm going to go at night.
Okay, but you have to have one from when you were a child, too, right?
[00:09:33] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Lord dro.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: What?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Kreichje. As you draw.
So in English, it would be, what do you get when you spell lord backwards?
Draw, which means turd.
What do you get when you spell draw backwards? Dirty hands.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: It's disgusting. Funny. It's great.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Children love it.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: And it's such a little kid joke.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: When I Was growing up, poop jokes were kind of a major theme and it would make all of us laugh. So I didn't grow up in a very sophisticated family when it comes to the jokes, but I'm proud of it because I still see, you know, sometimes comedians standing in front of full grown ups and making these jokes, and then pretty much everyone laughs. So there's something to it.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Well, if you grew, if you grew up in a family that laughs together, then you were bonding and that's what it's about.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: That's very true.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: And it really gives me the feeling that humor and tickling and all of this are natural parts of human development. And that does make it feel like it's rooted in our evolutionary past.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: And that's not surprising. We are social primates, right? And humor is pro social. It's the way that people bond with each other.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: So when you say to your friend, hey, do you remember that time when you put your shirt on backwards at that party? That was hilarious. And then we all laugh about that and we bond.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Exactly. And there is an aspect of social inclusion and exclusion.
We talk about inside humor, or we say that you are in on a joke.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: And of course, humor can be used against someone. When we say the joke's on you or that someone is the butt of a joke, that marks you as an outsider.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: There's even an element of social competition with humor. People say things like, she's the life of the party. And if you don't laugh at something that everyone thinks is funny, well, then you are a party pooper.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: And there's also theorizing that says that humor is closely related to creativity and intelligence, that being funny marks you as smart, which of course can help you with reproductive success.
So let's regroup a bit.
Rats chirp with pleasure. Chimpanzees and children giggle when you tickle them.
And those things relate to play, to bonding, and to safe stimulation.
And humor is also pro social. It can boost your prestige. It may signal intelligence or creativity.
And it marks you as an in group.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: This all makes sense to me, but it still leaves us with a much harder question.
What makes something funny?
[00:12:23] Speaker A: And that brings us to part two.
That's hilarious.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: So what makes something funny? What is the cognitive trigger of humor?
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Let's start with what comedians say, because they spend a lot of time figuring out what makes something funny. So here are some quotes.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Steve Martin says comedy is a distortion of what is happening. And that is similar to something Jerry Seinfeld says. A joke is funny when a line of logic is going one way, and then it doesn't.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: And so here's a joke that demonstrates this idea. This is by Mel Brooks.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down a manhole and die.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: That's funny.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Is that dark enough for you?
[00:13:21] Speaker B: I love it. Yeah, keep it coming.
So tragedy is when I cut my finger.
Is the logic taking you in one direction, and then the switch comes.
Comedy is when you fall down a manhole and die.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: And this switch in direction, this distortion that comedians are talking about, it agrees completely with what cognitive science tells us.
Our brains process information about our environment by anticipating what comes next.
And in the case of humor, our mind sees one pattern, and then there's a mismatch or a violation of expectations. And this juxtaposition is basically experienced by our nervous system as play.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: So this actually takes us back to rat chirps and chimpanzee giggles.
Tickling is an unexpected but harmless stimulation that signals bonding and play.
And I like the idea that humor in humans is like verbal tickling. The cognitive mismatch of a joke is the unexpected but harmless stimulation.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: So let's dig a bit more into what's happening at the cognitive level, and we'll use an example from a joke by an American comedian, Mitch Hedberg, and he talks about escalators. You know, the things that take you up to the next level in the shopping mall. So let's listen to what he says, and then we'll analyze why it's funny.
I like an escalator, man, because an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: All right?
[00:15:08] Speaker A: There would never be an escalator temporarily
[00:15:11] Speaker D: out of order sign.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Only an escalator. Temporarily stairs.
Sorry for the convenience.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: So what's the pattern mismatch we were talking about?
[00:15:32] Speaker A: So first he creates anticipation, which comes from a mismatch. He says, I like an escalator because an escalator can never break. But we think, well, of course it can break.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Then he resolves that mismatch by saying, it can only become stairs. And that creates an incongruous picture in our mind. Let's call it a playful picture of an escalator that isn't moving. It's broken, but the logic is twisted. It's not broken. It's now stairs.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: It's not broken. It's now stairs. I still find it funny even repeating it.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: I do feel we owe Mitch Hedberg an apology here, because the moment you have to explain a joke, you've already kind of ruined it.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Yes, Sorry, Mitch, but that connects well with what's next, which is understanding why humor can be so cultural.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Everything depends on anticipation and mismatch, so it relies on sharing the same expectations about a situation.
So let's give an example of humor that is grounded pretty heavily in Japanese cultural expectations.
As explained to us by podcast team member Yuto Aki.
[00:16:47] Speaker D: Japanese comedy is highly diverse, but there is one key feature that stands out.
The boketsukomi dynamic.
In fact, it's a central feature of Manzai, a two person comedy routine.
I love this type of humor, but it can be hard to explain.
Boke and Tsukomi refers to the roles that the comedians play.
The term bokeh literally means blurry or out of focus, and by extension, airheaded or senile.
The boke is the idiot or the clueless one who says things that are off the wall.
The word means to make a sharp comeback.
So the boke will say something that's bizarre and the tsukomi reacts and puts the boke in their place.
Here's an example by a popular comedy duo, Sandwich Man.
[00:17:58] Speaker E: Mayo to be gpo.
[00:17:59] Speaker D: Yeah, I could listen to this a hundred times and I would still find it funny. But let me explain. Here's the setting. Date, the tsukomi ordered pizza and it's been an hour, but he hasn't got it yet. Tomizawa the boke plays the delivery guy who finally arrives at his door.
Date opens the door.
Tomizawa goes, omatase.
Hi, here's your pizza. Date goes Osei Bake.
Hey, you're late. I've been waiting for an hour.
Tomizawa goes, simase.
Oh, sorry, I got lost on the way.
Date says, what you mean you got lost? It's literally one straight road.
Tomizawa goes, yeah, ikuka doka de mayo.
No, I got lost. As to whether I should go deliver your pizza or not.
Date says, yeha soko maiyo nayo. Don't get lost there.
Of course, this kind of humor easily gets lost in translation.
What's funny is the interaction, the timing, the social expectations being broken.
And that feels very Japanese to me.
But I think parts of Manzai are universal.
For example, the idiot or the clown reacting to the indignities of everyday life.
And there is wordplay.
Tomizawa says he quote unquote, got lost.
Mayo means to lose one's way. But mayo can also mean to be uncertain about what to do.
And it's absurd that a pizza delivery person tells you they got lost about whether to make the delivery.
And I just love this stuff.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: So, Joseph, you've lived in Japan for many years. Is Mansai funny for you?
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Well, I have to say I listened not only to this clip, but to a whole routine that this comedy duo does. And I'm sorry, I just don't find it very funny. It is very much about social expectations. Sometimes it just feels silly to me. Other times it feels rude. Like the last line that Yuto explains.
Soko mayo nayo. It's like a pretty rude way to say that, but I guess for Japanese it seems rude in a funny way.
Then on the other hand, we participate in all kinds of communities, so that also means that humor can connect us beyond cultural boundaries. And that's something that podcast team member Albert Mangami has some thoughts about.
[00:21:07] Speaker E: It's easy to notice when humor doesn't work across cultures, but lately I've noticed how much humor does travel, especially because of digital third spaces where people from completely different backgrounds interact, share and laugh together.
Just this morning I was watching a video by Daniel Ekbe Aquaman, a Nigerian comedian. In the skit, he's dramatically crying because his roommate cleaned out a pot that still had his afang soup in it.
Now, I'm not Nigerian, I'm not Igbo. I've never even had afang soup. I don't share that cultural background at all, but the feeling instantly relatable, the experience of someone eating your leftovers. That pain is global and over a million people found it funny.
I think humor sits on a spectrum. You have deeply embedded humor like satire that requires insider knowledge and group membership.
On the other end, you have humor based in shared human universals, like food, relationships, awkwardness.
I like to think that globalization can expand the middle ground, creating networks of shared knowledge and bringing us humor that works because we are all human.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: I instantly related to Daniel Ekpis kit. When I am eating, I always save the best bite for last. So just the thought, someone else taking that instant pain. So I just thought it was so funny.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: And it's true that humor doesn't rely necessarily on shared culture as it does on shared experience.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: And so I was also thinking about my husband, who laughs very much when comedians talk about immigrating to another country. There are just so many moments he immediately recognizes from his own experience immigrating to the Netherlands.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: But then again, this leads to something tricky because there can be a mismatch between cultural expectations about humor, like American humor versus British humor. Once I was in London visiting my friend's cousin. We're at the dinner table. I was trying to make polite conversation. And I said, so how do you like living in London? And he said, it's the worst fucking place in the whole world.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: He was taking the piss.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Exactly, he's taking the piss. Which is a kind of sarcasm that Americans just aren't good at. I had no idea what to say.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: And you are both so called native English speakers.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: But as we know, language and culture are not the same thing. And that is something that podcast team member Vanessa Eisenberg discovered.
Let's take a listen.
[00:24:16] Speaker F: British humour can be quite sarcastic or mocking, and the closer you are to someone, the more mean jokes can get.
I grew up in Singapore in an international environment that was culturally quite British, so this kind of interaction was fairly common.
A failed attempt at humour taught me that it's easy to mistake language ability for a shared cultural understanding.
I had met someone who was visiting Singapore from South America.
We hit it off immediately and I fell into a light, teasing dynamic with them.
As we got to know each other better, I grew more comfortable and my jokes became sharper.
At one point they were telling me about a bad habit their relative had and I laughingly, wow, no wonder they don't have a wife yet.
They pushed back, saying I was being too critical.
I thought it was all part of the game.
Later, however, I understood that they were genuinely hurt.
This created distance between us. I found it deeply upsetting. I'd had no intention to hurt them at all.
Now I realized there was a huge miscommunication.
I had projected my own cultural framework onto this person, expecting them to understand that my mockery was a sign of intended intimacy.
It slowly dawned on me that they were taking my comments literally.
I was mortified to think that my actions were perceived so negatively.
And even worse, I had unintentionally hurt a friend.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: So this story is really sad. I mean, this person totally misread her intention.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: And a lot of cultural bridge people have experienced this. But there's a good side too.
Foreign experiences can add to our toolbox of humor. We can learn new ways to find things funny.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: And podcast team member Leah has had to do that. She grew up in Norway, but lived for many years in the Philippines. She's a fluent Tagalog speaker.
Let's listen.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: Filipinos are brilliant when it comes to humor.
They laugh more openly than we do in Norway.
For years, their national slogan was it's more fun in the Philippines.
You would find a bakery named Bread Pit or a place selling fruit juice called Juice. Kidding. And even a restaurant selling Jesus fries.
One Filipina Friend told me, when someone gets hurt, we laugh first before helping because it's funny.
Once she and a friend had a car crash. The car was wrecked and they had to go to the hospital for checkup.
When they came back home, they were laughing hysterically.
When I lived in the Philippines, I hung out with Filipino and foreign friends.
We spent a lot of time joking around.
There were big cultural differences.
If an American tripped and fell in front of a group, the Europeans and Filipinos would laugh. It's like we're saying it's not serious and you're okay. There's a feeling of were all in this together.
But the American would feel offended. I think they expected sympathy.
Making fun of physical appearances or personal qualities is also common in the Philippines.
Like laughing at someone gaining weight.
Even now I have a friend whose nickname is Chubby, and this would be completely unacceptable in Norway.
Communication in the Philippines is indirect, and people sometimes use jokes to get the point across.
Joking is seen as a way to protect a friendship.
It can also mask pain.
If a friend is joking a lot, it might mean that they're going through a struggle.
These differences. This did get me into trouble.
In Norway, playing pranks is a common form of humor.
So me and my Dutch friend decided to put a dead fish under the pillow our Filipino friend.
They didn't find it funny. We had to repeatedly apologize and make amends.
I've learned that there are many ways to be funny, but you have to be careful.
The differences can trip you up.
Like when you put the fish under someone's pillow.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: The first thing that strikes me is just how different humor can be.
Like laughing when someone falls down laughing about people's appearance.
Many Americans would find it hard to see those things as funny.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: And then Leah thought that putting a raw fish in someone's bat would be funny.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: I mean, it's funny to hear about it now, but I, that's for sure, can't imagine that I would actually think it would be funny to do oh no.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: And just the smell, just the thought of it.
But I'm also curious about the idea that humor is really important in the Philippines. That a society can put a high value on humor.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: And that brings us to part three. That's not funny.
There is research into cultural differences in humor. For example, here's a quote from one review article.
Compared to North Americans, East Asians tend to hold less positive and more ambivalent attitudes towards humor and rate themselves as less humorous.
Whereas North Americans commonly use humor as a form of catharsis to mitigate Negativity in life. East Asians are less inclined to do so, but I think it's a lot more complex than that. These samples were very limited. A lot of the research is between East Asia and North America. And this is asking about attitudes towards humor, which is not the same thing as how humor is used.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: But there's something else I'm interested in, and that is how culture is used to create an us versus them.
Sometimes in a good way and sometimes not.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: And Lia shared her perspective on this. Let's take a listen.
[00:31:07] Speaker C: In Norway, Sweden and Denmark, we grow up with a lot of jokes and friendly banter between our countries and cultures.
Many of these jokes follow a familiar pattern.
When told by a Norwegian, the Norwegian comes out looking good, the Dane and the Swede a bit stupid.
For example, once upon a time, a Norwegian, a Dane and a Swede were out walking in the forest.
The Norwegian was deaf, the Dane was blind, and the Swede was paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair.
After a while they came across a magical cave where each of them could have one wish granted.
First the Norwegian went in. After a while he came out and exclaimed happily, Guys, I can hear.
Then the Dane went in and came out just as pleased.
Guys, I can see.
Finally, the Swede rolled into the cave.
After a while he came out and shouted, look, guys, new wheels.
Foreigners may interpret this as disrespectful or even hateful, but we grew up with jokes like this.
It feels to me that we are like siblings who tease each other, but absolutely help and protect each other when needed. And of course Norwegians know that Swedes tell the same kinds of jokes at our expense.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: I just love how Leah compares this to siblings teasing each other. It reminds me of the Dutch Belgenmoppen. So these are jokes about Belgians being naive or less intelligent. And of course, Belgians have their own Nederlandermoppen, where the Dutch are portrayed as frugal and arrogant. So humor can create both distance and connection at the same time.
That's something that Ijeta Rai has given some thought to. Let's listen.
[00:33:31] Speaker G: India is a diverse society.
It is also a hierarchical society.
Everyone has a place and nothing is equal.
What role is there for humor in a place where inequity is as inescapable and toxic as the air you breathe?
First, humor is a social glue.
You bond by playing with stereotypes.
A Bengali stand up comedian, Onirban Dasgupta, opened one of his acts with the following line.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: My daughter is half Bengali, which I
[00:34:13] Speaker D: think is the maximum Bengali one should be.
[00:34:20] Speaker G: But humor can also be weaponized.
I grew up hearing countless jokes about other Indian languages.
Hindi is weird because of how you conjugate verbs.
Tamil sounds like you have pebbles in your mouth.
Bengali sounds like you have a roshogolla, a ball shaped Bengali, sweet in your mug. Konkani is fisherman's, Marathi and on and on.
Casually poking fun at other communities was normal.
Is this humor?
Is it harmless?
Indian stand up comedian Varun Grover talks about the power dynamics of humor in India.
[00:35:10] Speaker H: If you are talking to someone in power and there's this power dynamic, so you're punching up, which is the basic of comedy. You have to punch up. And what is punching up? Basically you are making jokes of people who have a choice and who have made the conscious choice. And you can talk about the choice as a comedian you should not. I feel punch down and punch down is basically making fun of things. People don't have a choice in, you know, skin complexion or obesity or the religion they are born in or the family or the caste or whatever. There are so many indicators where we don't have a choice. We are there and we are born into it or life has thrown us into that.
[00:35:55] Speaker G: I find humor like this to be empowering.
Again, Varun Grover.
[00:36:03] Speaker H: Comedy or satire specifically, or humor, which is our stand up comedy world, connects with people because everyone is angry or dejected or somehow frustrated with the system. And there are so many systems that control us and the moment you give voice to that, it connects with people. It empowers me that yes, this system which feels like super powerful and all controlling, still there is a small needle.
It won't, you know, bring the castle down. But I can probably slowly be like, okay, I am this powerful. I am also powerful in a very small manner. But I have that and I am doing it non violently. I am doing it politely, I am doing it in the most whatever respectful language.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: This is powerful stuff.
Humor can be entertaining, but it's not just entertainment. It's powerful because it resonates with deep parts of our humanity.
We use it to bond, but also to exclude.
So let's come back to humor across cultures. What have we learned from all of this?
[00:37:23] Speaker A: So one reason that humor may not travel well is that it violates expectations, but in a safe way. For example, the social mismatch in the clip that Juto played just doesn't resonate with me.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Plus what counts as safe depends a lot on culture. Like dark humor in the Netherlands that feels like too much to an American.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: And then There are many types of humor and many different kinds of mismatches that they play on.
So where does this leave us? This topic was definitely deeper than I expected, but it was a lot of fun and I really loved learning about your dark sense of humor.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: I like the rad giggles and of course best of all was to hear all the stories from our wonderful podcast team members.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: And unfortunately, that's all the fun and games we have time for today. So let's share some of our sources. In addition to the articles we mentioned in part one, you can find the Rat Giggle video on YouTube. Look for Eavesdrop on Ultrasonic Rat Giggles and that was published by scientific American.
The BBC clip is also on YouTube. It's from Making a Chimp Laugh. From the program Animals in Love, we
[00:38:36] Speaker B: refer to the work of Jaak Panksep. His seminal article is Laughing Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents of Human Joy together with Jeff Bergdorf in Psychology and Behavior.
We also learned a lot from laughter, Play Faces and Mimicry in Animals, Evolution and Social Functions by Marina Davila Ross and Elisabetta Palagi in Philosophical Transactions.
Finally, the clip from the Indian writer and comedian Varun Grover is from YouTube. Search for Ignition 2025 Varun Grover the
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Deep Culture Experience Podcast is sponsored by the Japan Intercultural Institute and NPO dedicated to intricacies, cultural education and research. I'm the director of jii. Are you looking for a community that shares your interest in learning deep cultural lessons? Well, check out jii's Deep Culture Approach Masterclass series.
Just do a web search for the Japan Intercultural Institute.
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[email protected] thanks
[00:39:47] Speaker B: to Vanessa Eisenberg, Issy Terai, Lia Torhild, Leonhar Skarnes, Yuto Aki, and Albert Mangami for sharing your stories and of course MRE7, Harshini Madarasinge, sound engineer Robinson Fritz, JIIS, administrator Ikomi Fritz and everyone at JII.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Thanks so much to you and Leah for coming up with the idea for this episode. I loved working on it together.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: I really enjoyed exploring this topic with you and Leah and I hope it brought a smile to some faces. I learned a lot about why humor can connect so deeply and why sometimes it simply doesn't land in the same way.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Indeed,
