all right woo yeah let's hear it all right woo thank you guys for coming I'm a little disappointed they promised me pyrot Technics when I got out but I will make do oh my gosh this is so exciting thank you guys so much for having me oh I am really excited to be here as the keynote speaker for South by Southwest EDU all right only a couple more Applause breaks I promise um I know you guys are probably disappointed that the South by Southwest edu keynote for today is not in fact ly Manuel Miranda I apologize for that I will do my best um it's really exciting uh to be here this is actually my first South by Southwest anybody else here for the first time wow a lot of you guys okay welcome as overwhelmed and freaked out as I am I hope um yeah it's interesting because when I was telling people I was coming to South by Southwest a lot of people were saying oh this is like really cool there's going to be like celebrities and rock stars performing on stage and I was like you know I'm kind of in awe right now because I think I think South by Southwest edu got it backwards because I'm seeing the rock stars in the audience today [Applause] [Laughter] so all right so let's get into it for today I'm I'm going to be talking to you guys about science comedy part one why it's a thing I'm going to get a little bit into the comedy of Science and the science of Comedy then I'll go into part two how to do it so you guys are going to be leaving here today with 18 tried and true tools for being funny when communicating in stem so there's something that will actually be practical about this talk and then finally we will have time for questions at the end so as you guys as I go through this presentation if you have any questions please make sure to write them down through the slido app it should be in the session section of the South by Southwest app I'll let you guys figure it out and I will answer them at the end so yes if you guys have questions or compliments please put them there if you have criticisms there's this app in your phone called notes um trust me it goes someplace really important just put them there all right so I have an hour with you today um and so I want to try a little experiment so what if instead of giving you this riveting rolicking talk I asked you all just to sit in silence for an hour how about we sit in silence for an hour how would you feel about that probably uh the worst possibility imaginable for many of you like myself because it would be incredibly boring um what would you do to avoid that situation well scientists actually have a pretty good idea of what you would do to avoid that situation for starters according to science people would rather electrocute themselves than be bored yeah so a 24 study out of the University of Virginia put hundreds of undergraduates in a room and asked them just to be alone with their thoughts and surprisingly a lot of people reported they were bored science but then they were given in phase two the option to electrocute themselves and even though these undergrads these poor undergrads had responded earlier that they would have preferred to pay money than be electrocuted when the alternative was being alone with their thoughts people preferred electrocution and by people I am also of course referring to mostly men uh the breakdown was about 2third male one quarter women for electrocution um but still um in researching this talk I was a little bit nervous I was like oh my gosh what if I'm boring on stage today so actually came prepared um if any of you guys are bored there's actually some exposed wiring on the side of the stage have at it um so one of the cool things about this study is there's actually kind of a silver lining uh in order to not be boring you just have to be more entertaining than electrocuting yourself but I'm going to try to bring this um a step a step further so this is me I am a science comedy writer um who here knows the guy I'm with right now yeah so he's kind of the opposite of boring this is my former boss and Mentor Neil degrass Tyson and I met him in uh 2016 and he had a pretty dramatic impact on my life I started lead writing for his show star talk um excuse me not quite going back oh I'm missing a slide okay so I started writing for his show star talk and when I was writing for Star Talk I got to do what all comedy writers dream of I got to write for amazing comedians like sasher zida and Chuck Nice And even cooler and kind of more unexpectedly I got to meet really cool scientist such as um you know well Neil degress Tyson but also astronauts like Mark Kelly and uh even got to work with robots like Sophia the robot so it was a real dream but most importantly I got a front row education in stem which I had been sorely missing now prior to working at Star Talk I was really interested in political comedy um I was interested in political comedy because I grew up with uh John Stewart and the rise of political satus using humor as a tool to educate the public about politics um I actually through this through this interest I got to write for the White House Press correspondence dinner which was like a total dream um and I actually wrote my thesis on political comedy uh in undergrad at Harvard um this was the process of writing said thesis yeah how many people here know what that feeling feels like when writing a thesis yeah existential despair um but one of the interesting things actually about majoring in government at Harvard is that it had the fewest number of requirements it was actually generally considered the easiest concentration of everything out there what that says about our modern-day political system I'll let you guys be the judge but one of the benefits of having so few requirements is that I actually got to take a lot of electives and specifically I took science electives so I took science electives because I was really passionate about science in high school this was me in high school now I wonder what you're thinking um why is this amateur magician at a bot Mitzvah um presenting at a science fair I was really into vests you guys still am you guys are clocking it all right so yeah very into science um I was really into science I did the California state science fair many years out of high school um but I ultimately didn't pursue in college why didn't I pursue stem as a major well all I can tell you for now is that I'm not alone so according to a 2016 study that has later been verified more recently there is a drop off in interest in stem that starts roughly around the fourth grade so around fourth grade about 2third of girls and boys roughly the same numbers are interested in the stem but then as you go into High School you see those numbers start to change specifically you see a drop in girls about 57% of girls are interested in stem and a rise and boys about 70% and then we experience what I call the college Cliff when people actually go to college you see these numbers drop dramatically 177% of girls and about 32% of boys actually choose to major in stem and even worse only half of those people complete their degree until finally we only have about 19% of women and 30% of men entering the stem Workforce so what do I attribute to this lack of interest in stem over time well I attribute it to boredom boredom is a problem because boredom has consequences like missed opportunities for this poor unfortunate boy um but then there's the consequences of boredom in science and boredom in science has high consequences because science has high consequences missed opportunities in the real world are one thing but missed opportunities in stem translate to unheard theories uninvented Technologies uninspired scientists and worse of all untapped potential scientists so that was a little bit about boredom in science now to get into uh why so one reason I blame for bordom in science is jargon now jargon is any particular words or phrases used by a group uh that are oftentimes hard to discern by Outsiders now we use jargon a lot of the times to Signal who we are not by what we say but by how we say it but the tradeoff there is that we're excluding people so unfortunately well before I get into the consequence of that it reminds me of this great quote by Gilbert and Sullivan if this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me why what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be I think that's kind of like what people how they want to be seen when they're using complex scientific jargon so here are some of the consequences of it the more jargon you put in your abstract researchers found the fewer citations those papers were actually cited for so un fortunately this problem is actually on the rise we're seeing more and more jargon and abstracts this was a study of about 650 abstracts but in a much larger comprehensive study of about 700,000 papers we're seeing readability decline dramatically and researchers attribute this to the rise in jargon why there is such lower readability so there are many consequences to boredom how many of you guys have performed in in front of audiences that look like that I know what it feels like right now just kidding thank God no so boredom has a lot of consequences um one thing is it's correlated with poor sleep another thing is that it is correlated with um cardiovascular issues and also mortality and then as you can see from this Pi picture if you look closely enough boredom is actually associated with um messy sausage Fingers um I uh so a lot of these images were created with the help of AI and I just want to point out that AI still can't do fingers so still hilarious um all right so there are consequences to boredom but one of the things I want to ask you guys is how do we combat boredom well it'll probably surprise nobody being given my introduction and everything that I am going to argue that humor combats boredom so here are some reasons why I think humor can combat boredom well one just on the physical level it can actually counteract some of those health issues we just talked about so comedy can help reduce anxiety and blood pressure perhaps you know mitigating the effects in the boredom uh situation with cardiovascular health and then it has a lot of effects on reducing stress so it's really good for your health but conceptually one of the reasons why I think humor combats boredom has to do with this old saying there's an old adage that says the opposite of Love isn't hate it's indifference well there's a Corel here I find which is that the opposite of boredom isn't just tragedy in the form of electrocution it's also comedy Now comedy and tragedy actually kind of have something in common they're both stories with surprises at the end structurally they're actually quite similar now before I get into the science of Comedy a little bit just want to say that uh there's a quote about talking about comedy from eie White explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog you understand it better but the frog dies in the process so my apologies y'all there's going to be a lot of dead frogs on stage tonight tonight I'm used to performing in clubs excuse me if you could all just pretend that you're drunk that would really make me feel at ease um anyway um so yeah I'm going to be talking a little bit about comedy and sometimes that takes the joy out of it but I do find that laughter is the sound of the unexpected and in a way when you think about it the setup is there to set expectations and the punchline upends them that's the basic anatomy of a joke so what I want to know was excuse me this next part is about how in some ways humor is actually like a science experiment but it's like a science experiment where the hypothesis is delightfully wrong so it has some similarities to the scientific method so like I said earlier humor and tragedy kind of are mirrors of each other because they both both um have a similar Arc structure with a surprise at the end and they're both kind of like stories and there's a wealth of research that you guys as Educators probably know about how stories can improve memory this was an early study out of Stanford that's later been uh reaffirmed and replicated that stories can improve memory Sevenfold uh when undergraduates were asked these poor undergraduates when when undergraduates were asked to memorize a bunch of information when they could put into a story it improved the amount of information they could remember by seven times and so stories are good for memory and what is comedy if not a story with something unexpected at the end I love this jef let's just watch it one more time okay um now there's a wealth of research about how comedy is useful for communication so we find uh that comedy can make others think of you as more confident and competent audience retain information longer when they enjoy receiving it and laughter increases energy interest and approval of a topic it's probably why I uh to you guys appear so confident and competent and you're all so approving of me right now um just kidding uh put it in the slido app guys if you disagree all right um so I was looking at a lot of this humor research um a couple of years ago and there's a wealth of it there's a lot of humor research out there but what's interesting is it's all studying comedy's effect on different types of Engagement but it's not studying different types of Comedy now as a comedy writer this is something I think about a lot and the scientists leading these studies probably don't think about different types of Comedy but as a quick little experiment I want you guys to think of Comedy just think to yourself whatever jumps to mind now I don't know what you're thinking but I know that you're not all thinking the same things some of you might be thinking about Ricky D's standup some of you might be thinking about the Muppets I don't know if anybody here is thinking about Abbot Elementary yeah knowing the Educators in the audience might like that one um so there's different types of comedy and there's different ways to think about them there's different formats of course there's TV shows versus standup there's different styles there's cerebral versus slapstick but there's one AIS that matters the most to me in the line of work that I do and that is positivity versus aggression so positivity versus aggression matters a lot to me as a science comedian here's why so in a nutshell aggressive humor is known as juvenalian satire it is aggressive it's biting and most importantly it's targeted there's an object of derision then there's horatian satire h satire is more playful it's bridge building sometimes the object being made fun of is the person themselves hence why this Muppet looks so strange sometimes the comedy comes from the oddness of the thing emanating the comedy Now um with juvenalian satire it's aggressive but you guys are probably familiar with it um it is buffeted by the superiority theory of humor the superiority theory of humor was first put forward by everybody's famous favorite comedian uh Thomas Hobbs yeah the guy who wrote Leviathan thought he'd weigh into comedy um and his theory was that people found stuff funny people laughed at The Misfortune of others because it reinforced their own superiority uh kind of a depressing Theory what a shocker from Thomas Hobbs um so that is the superiority theory of humor but you're kind of you're probably already familiar with it with things like for example uh the Darwin Awards uh the Darwin Awards are a great example of feeling Superior at The Misfortune of others it sort of reminds me of that um Mel Brooks quote about this kind of humor he says uh tragedy is when I get a paper cut comedy is when you fall into an open sewer great and die so different levels of empathy there um positive humor however is buffeted slightly more by the benign violation theory of humor so that benign violation Theory holds that humor comes from something that violates a social Norm something unexpected but most crucially does not cause harm now this for example might a good example of the benign violation more positive theory of humor might be um borat's bikini he is certainly violating a social norm and arguably it's benign arguably uh so there are different types of comedy and so this led me to asking this question does humor increase trust in science communication and if so crucially what kind what do different types of humor uh how do they actually affect affect science communication so there like I said there was this wealth of information on different types of Engagement um and not different types of comedy and so I decided to fix that I and my team uh teamed up with the wonderful researchers at the University of Utah under the lab of great humor researcher Sarah K yo and we designed a study that we just finished the results are actually just analyzed so this study is hot off the press still has that new study smell uh which also means it's not peer reviewed so take it for what you will uh but I'm very excited about these results so let me tell you how the study was designed three groups of people heard a speech from a scientist about an obscure renewable energy the first group heard an unfunny version of the speech the second group heard an aggressive and dark ly funny version of the speech you could tell that he's aggressive because he's wearing a leather jacket now um and then the final group heard a positive and playfully funny version of the speech you could tell it's playful cuz he's shrugging what's the deal that's the how I imagin him speaking anyway okay so three different types of speeches and here were the results they found that the more m the scientist produces which is our measurement for humor the more trustworthy the scientist appears that's great but there was an important caveat the more aggressive the scientists is perceived trust plummets so this is really important information because when I talk about science in when I talk about comedy and science communication people tend to think about all different types of Comedy but you really have to think about more positive versions of Comedy so the takeaway from this this study is if you're going to use comedy in your chosen field and I do recommend it the most important thing is to be positive look at that guy giv the thumbs up very positive so think a little bit more like PeeWee Herman and a little bit less like insult like Triumph the insult comic dog um be positive now I'll give you a realworld example of The Perils of aggressive comedy and science communication who here knows who this guy is anybody shout it out yeah giv giv the Educators a little taste of your own medicine there with the cold call it is Galileo good job extra credit um so yes that is Galileo so people say commonly that Galileo was arrested for saying the sun was the center of the solar system but that's not exactly the whole story so in 1616 Galileo did have a lot of run-ins with the Catholic church but by 1632 the pope had actually given Galileo permission to publish about heliocentrism so there was one condition to this approval Galileo had to give the Pope's counterargument fair treatment so Galileo published a dialogue and in the dialogue he would have an author stand in the author standin was a noble philosopher named salviati and for the Pope's view his standin was a comically incompetent philosopher named and I kid you not simplicio yeah so not too surprisingly the church was not very happy with that so they placed him under lifelong house arrest and they banned him from ever publishing again now the book was still a commercial success in my opinion testifying to the ability of comedy's uh effect on communication to improve communication how however Galileo failed to consider all of his audience now what was Galileo's main problem was it perhaps the lack of good public education was it perhaps the lack of separation between church and state well I argue it's neither of these I argue that he should have hired professionals um specifically my company we were about 400 years away from existing but still um so inspired by my time writing for Neil degrass Tyson I started a company called hello scom and at hello sycom we help all kinds of stem professionals to communicate in an entertaining way we make intelligence entertaining so here are some reasons why oh by the way yeah this is what a typical meeting looks like I just write jokes on the board and then we just write them all down all right so here's why we do what we do in a nutshell science is the frontier of knowledge technology is the frontier of tools but Frontiers are scary by their very nature the frontiers of the edge of the unknown so Frontiers are scary and as my former boss Neil used to say you can't laugh and be afraid at the same time as I like to say comedy is a back door into consciousness so that's a little bit about why we exist and our mission statement let me tell you a little bit about what we believe in We Believe In Fun most importantly as you can tell from this photo we also believe in shaking hands and finally we believe in casual water cooler talk just some candid shots of us around the office very candid and not stage so let me tell you a little bit about our work in the world um Mak making all kinds of stem entertaining so we have helped put science and comedy into the world in a number of ways we've helped uh create a chatbot that was so sold at SBE uh We've created viral Tik toks for a prominent Science magazine we helped create the personality for a robot at Honda this is a different robot we work with a lot of robots um for some reason a quarter of our clients are robots anyway just worked out that way um and then finally most recently we wrote jokes for a kidney donation Advocate before Congress helped her leave an impression and our work has taken us all over the world everywhere from Yale to the UN to Universal Studios spreading humor in stem communication wherever we go but here's the thing what we do isn't you're not born with it it's un inherent it's actually teachable so I'm going to walk you through our formula so I present to you guys the principles of pyom Imagine Reverb on that um science comedy the principles of science comedy so the first principle of science comedy is positivity borrowing a little here from uh Marie condo but think about what sparks joy in your chosen field and then channel that positivity if you're in math we all know that there was that one moment where you first fell in love with math or maybe it grew on you but channel that positivity of what sparked joy in you in the first place that beginners enthusiasm in Ornithology there's this really great term called spark bird spark bird is your bird that first got you interested in Ornithology and I know this because I was into Ornithology in high school very very cool and um my spark bird was the northern ganet and I got so so good at doing the bird call for the northern ganet that I actually got to do the bird call on the Letterman show um in high school I was super super cool so I if I did the bird call right now Northern ganet would flood the room no I'm out of that game now I'm out of the game all right I lost you know what you know what afterwards maybe in the questions time all right I got to get through the presentation so in a way my spark bird was not just the northern ganet it was also the Letterman show itself the Letterman show kind of functioned as my spark bird because I got interested in comedy so that was why we were ecstatic to get the results that we did from the University of Utah because it showed what essentially 10 years of empirical data of my work as a science comedy writer and the past four years for my company had what the data that we'd been exposed to which is that positivity ma matters because enthusiasm is contagious and this I had learned from Neil so I thank him for that um now we put this work into the world so for example one way that we put positivity into our humor and into conversations about stem we were asked by this wonderful um Science magazine Proto dolie to write a piece about the science of longevity here is how we chose to approach the science of longevity old people are hot now who's ever clapping I like that uh you know what I mean all right we chose to you know take on this topic in the more delightful tone that channels the positivity that a lot of experts in longevity are trying to go for so in a way this principle Le trumps all the other ones I'm going to tell you guys tonight tonight gosh today we're in the morning I'm sorry all right here we go next up timing the principle of Comedy to timing what I mean by that is one of the first principles of Comedy is timing timing isn't just about delivery though it's also knowing when to tell a joke so I personally don't think that there's any place where you can't tell a joke uh situations that could use humor some of these are ones I've actually employed but the most important thing is to read the room doesn't matter where you are it matters the people you're with so that's a little bit about timing next up keep it simple so keep it simple or in other words it is Paramount to keep one's discourse straightforward that is to say Elementary transparent you get the idea keep it simple keep it simple why because this is what most people think they look like when in reality that's what they actually look we tend to have a simpler version in our heads than what manifests so keep it simple and keep it contained yeah I know oh I'm so glad you like that because you're going to love the rest of this presentation lot of cat gifs anyway next principle be relatable so if you're going to communicate about something relatively unknown to an audience try to use known examples comparison references all different types of relatable references so for example if you're talking about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle where you can't know an electron's true velocity or position in time and space Maybe relate that to how you can never tell where the dang TV remote is am I right relatable here's an example of the way we use relatable comedy in the world so for that um for that very kidney client kidney transplant activist I was talking about earlier she was at a congressional hearing we wrote this joke for her I also want to mention that kidney donation is safer than childbirth and you don't have to pay for them to go to college that one hit really hard with Congress for some reason so maybe there's hope um so be relatable use you know know your audience um make pop culture references but make sure they're relatable so for example I might be a huge fan of the Ukrainian show Nash which is about a detective who uses his sense of smell to smell out crime but um you guys probably don't know that show and so if I were to to make a reference like a knowing inside joke about the sexual tension between the sniffer and Julia in seasons 1 and two of Nash you guys probably wouldn't get that reference but if I were to make a joke about I don't know the sexual tension between Janine and Gregory and Abbott Elementary yeah I know fingers crossed guys that would probably reach more people in an education-based audience yes so weird I would choose the show Abbot Elementary a show about how educators can transform lives that right there is known as pandering um anyway so make pop culture references that people will understand that is the point of that for example in this audience maybe some jokes about how driving in downtown during South by Southwest sucks and what it's like to be a teacher um here is an example of knowing your audience in our work in the world uh we were representing a Science magazine they wanted to reach a younger audience so one we went to a platform that was a an example of knowing our audience we went we decided to start their Tik Tok um then we decided to convey to summarize a lot of their articles in digestible forms that uh people like gen Z kids would like so for example we did a Tik Tok explaining how uh seahorses reproduce by showing somebody breaking up with a marine biologist because uh human males are worse Partners than seahorse Partners anyway I recommend you check it out all right so next up the information Burger you guys probably know this one the information Burger is a three-step process of telling your audience uh information uh three steps to the process tell them what you're going to tell them tell them tell them what you told him that technique was the information Burger a three step process for helping your audience retain information yeah some of you saw what I did there I appreciate that hope you like meta jokes all right speaking of hamburgers to represent information metaphors metaphors are your friend metaphors are a bridge to understanding metaphors are like a friend that teaches you something helpful that was a simile boom that was an anopia anyway um metaphors is very useful here are some examples of metaphors if you're going to talk about the heart you could talk about it as a pump if you want to talk about D digestive system it's like Plumbing here's some metaphors we've used in our work uh so for that uh renewable energy client we wrote this joke comparing EGS energy to oil and gas is like comparing Dennis Quaid to Randy Quaid sure they're related but one should probably stay in Canada metaphors uh so that right there that's a simile and by the way to clarify um similes are a subtype of metaphor so a simile is like a mint chip cookie uh if metaphors are baked goods that was a metaphor explaining metaphors okay moving on so next up for uh this same EGS client um this is actually a metaphor EGS unlike solar energy can run 24/7 it is the Waffle House of renewable energy so mix um make sure however not to mix your metaphors uh be careful you know I know that uh it's hard you can mangle your metaphors but of course you can't always make an omelet by beating a few dead horses so careful with the metaphors another thing to be worried about with metaphors is that they can sometimes lead your audience too far down a rabbit hole so for example um we've learned a lot about atoms as like many planetary systems with uh planets being electrons orbiting the center however as you get further in physics you realize that this metaphor actually is not super accurate that in fact electrons are more like a cloud of probability so make sure that you are careful with your metaphors here's a bad metaphor example uh Sarah's job is like a therapist in that she gets paid to do what most people do for free this metaphor comes from my mom um why is this a bad metaphor well it's actually a simile it's wordy and also it's hurtful so all right let's Skate On Through uh use visuals they can leave your audience uh it can help the with memory so uh using visuals can help your audience uh remember things like sinking into your audience like a kitten on a memory foam mattress um I am going to skate past some of these uh examples because I want to get to questions at the end so I'm going to move on through you know okay let me explain this one actually uh so one of our clients was a bear safety expert um and she would she was trying to tell her students never to spray bear spray when the bear was less than 4 MERS away um and so we helped her explain that to her Audience by saying what if instead of one Canadian metric you used an even better one and said spray the bear when it's two trudos away um or one tudo or two-thirds of a trio anyway uh next up have confidence uh so don't get locked into the Dunning Krueger effect these are the researchers here's the Dunning Krueger effect what you find is as somebody enters a field even though their competen is low their enthusiasm is high and then we enter this low period I call this low period grad school grad school is when you know a lot about what you don't know and then you go back up and then you actually become an expert next up rule of Threes people remember things in rule of in threes well remember the information hamburger for example well in comedy it's also useful because it takes two things to establish a pattern and then the third thing can upend them so the rule of Threes is very helpful it's engaging and it will get you laid so use the rule of Threes um here's an example that we use for renewable energy there are three groups of people against geothermal energy environmentalists competitors and people recently dumped by geologists so another example keep them guessing so this is a really fun principle I made up um I like to play with the audience a little bit so here's a quote about it drop in an occasional lie to engage your audience you can't believe everything you see in a PowerPoint this of course comes from Susan B Anthony um very ahead of her time on that one women's suffrage and PowerPoints saw common um so like for example earlier you might have noticed the strange look of Dunning and Krueger um that's not in fact Dunning and Krueger that is in fact Sig freed and Roy um famed lion taming Duo from Vegas okay next principle up be self-deprecating um so make sure not to overdo this one you don't want to fall into the Dunning Krueger effect but it is good to be self-deprecating so for example earlier I mentioned my mom that is a great way of being self-deprecating is talking about how your mom keeps sending you elet books in the mail um great way being self-deprecating fun examples um so I'm going to skate past some of these and just say explaining generative AI maybe have it generate something interesting or take an example like this and work backwards like how did we end up at this point where AI still can't do fingers still can't do fingers still hilarious all right relatedly is absurd application so maybe explain a process um through a funny context so for example this guy is using geothermal heat to bake a pizza um here's another example this was a famous epidemiology paper and they used it to explain the mechanics of the zombie apocalypse or for example with my company we used AI tools to create the world's most perfect Super Bowl commercial I strongly recommend you guys look it up on YouTube but the best example of absurd application is Randall Monroe's book what if yes absolutely he and answers with very serious science very silly questions such as what would happen if the universe were filled with soup or what would happen if you threw a baseball at the speed of light so he has some really great examples of that I strongly recommend checking it out as an example of science comedy next up Czech off's gun so Czech off's gun is a dramatic principle by which you only introduce details particularly high stakes details if they're going to pay off later so we took this principle and we decided to make it fun check off's fun so he had talked about introducing a gun on stage it's got to go off later but we wanted to think what if you could actually bribe your audience in a positive way so if you can stick through the next principle I'm about to go through with you I will share with you a gif of a kitten discovering it has feet okay that's what's hanging in the bounce that's the bribe here all right next up everyone's favorite word play so a lot of puns are just predictable homonyms that you can see coming as teachers you're probably familiar with these two when don't you ever have to introduce these topics to a class you could see the jokes coming on the horizon but some puns are good because they're truly unexpected um I don't know if we have any Arrested Development fans yeah okay arrested go um but uh Mitch herwitz is a pun genius uh an example of a pun we used in our work once again for renewable energy we we wrote this joke EGS is great for the planet because it produces fewer greenhous house gases than your average Taco Tuesday I like this one because you don't see it coming soap puns very useful now that's it for word play now earlier remember when I said if you could stick through the next principle I would uh show you a gif remember my my teovan promise to you the covs fun principal well here is said GIF of kitten discovering it has feet and boom I have fulfilled my promise next one related to cheze of's gun callbacks and running gags so this one is kind of related to bribing your audience because callbacks and running gags give your audience a sense of cohesiveness to the whole presentation and they reward your audience for paying attention um so for example callbacks can help you to shock your audience remember from earlier remember that yes that is a call back um a callback is also um what my mom wants from me uh so that was my third or fourth mom reference so that makes it a running gag running gag happens more frequently throughout a present ation and it also gives a sense of cohesiveness to the presentation so for example um my my oh by the way I don't know if you guys notic but uh wearing a vest Brant vest in high school one might say they were a good investment anyway Still rocking it um so my mom was a running gag and also kittens were a running gag throughout this presentation giving a sense of cohesiveness and let's watch you one more time because it almost makes it and then boom okay all right so summaries are kind of in a way like callbacks because they uh also give your presentation a sense of cohesiveness so as we're getting close to the end I'm going to do a little bit of a summary here so summaries summary of the presentation electrocution is apparently preferable to boredom elect boredom is an epidemic in stem humor combats boredom and helps communication but only if it's positive okay that's really important and key stem represents Frontiers in Science and Tech and humor can combat those fears that those Frontiers produce then here are some of the principles I went over I won't bore you with them but I will say the last one I saved uh for the end surprisingly I saved the last one for the end who would have thought um the final principle to get to before questions interactivity this is a way of breaking the fourth wall and including your audience so for example if everybody wouldn't mind checking under your seats right now yeah you will find nothing uh [Laughter] because the prize was the journey folks um but interactivity can help um and so I will say the one way of interacting at the end is definitely by reaching out to me um I would love to hear from you guys there's so many awesome people here I'd love to hear what you're doing and how comedy might be able to help you so there's that and then there's also questions um so I would love to answer any questions you guys might have um I hope some of you have been writing them down throughout the uh slido app and here we are oh my God the bird call so listen you guys this is like asking Paul McCartney to do a Beetles song I need my team you saw there were two people on stage with me also the mic guys they wouldn't like it because I got to get real loud and I think it would blow out the speakers so n n you know what if South by Southwest invites me back next year then I'll do it okay all right I know I know the groans often times it's been a long time maybe at the end maybe I'm keep delaying it this is my chovan promise all right respect her boundaries did you say thank you love it all right next up okay from Tim Barnes oftentimes humor is difficult for students with disabilities or language barriers to understand what recommendations do you have to overcome those challenges that's great question so I used I had a really wonderful improv teacher um that I was insulting and I was um giving a I was actually writing jokes for a eulogy um and it was kind of difficult as you would imagine and I was asking him about it and he said my approach to Comedy in difficult situations is that the medicine goes where it hurts and I really liked that so I really feel like there is like No Boundaries to where you can do comedy it is just a m a matter of reading the room and being empathetic with your under your with your audience um I also by the way while um working at Star Talk got to work with a wonderful comedian who has cerebral py and there's actually like a lot of really amazing comedians with disabilities who perform so I strongly recommend Tim that you look to those people because oftentimes they can speak firsthand about that lived experience um and they're devastatingly funny um there once I saw this one disabled yeah you gotta I'm not going to do the joke because he's disabled it' be funnier if you heard am doing it but uh I recommend uh looking into those uh wonderful comedians on YouTube all right I promis my children I would bring back a science joke from your talk H any good ones to bring back to the little ones I mean that was the whole 45 minutes beforehand um you know there's like a oh my God again with the all the rest of the questions or bird call requests um I re I haven't done it 10 years you guys um I appreciate the woman who is like please respect her boundaries um but okay all right you know what it I it's going to be so bad it's going to be so bad I think it went something like this it was a little bit like that um thank you it it was really it was I chose it because it was weird sounding that's why Letterman liked it all right um okay any guidance on knowing how much comedy is too much so this is like a broader uh type of uh type of question and the answer is always going to come down to reading the room so it is hard when you're giving a a joke in a context where you actually can't see the audience but if you're performing in front of a crowd how much comedy is too much really just depends it's a feedback situation like you know if you tell a joke in a forest and nobody hears it does it make a sound comedy is like a it's a subjective experience so you really have to remember the other part of the equation so how much comedy is too much it really has to do with how your audience is uh perceiving the humor uh let's see what does the research show related to gender difference differences and perceptions when using humor um so that is something I'm less expert in because I find most of those studies depressing uh but um what does the research show related to gender differences in perceptions here's I actually I've read a little bit of the research but don't feel like qualified enough to speak to it I will say experientially about what I have seen is that men tend to be more comfortable with like a non-safe world like for example It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or derves whereas females tend to prefer a more safer world like the the movie Bridesmaids usually there fewer people die in uh comedies marketed to women um this one says as an amateur magician myself I just want to point out that we don't all wear [Laughter] vests hurtful stereotype I guess well I would just say this to whoever asked that question or to David uh well David Trachtenberg you say as an amateur magician I don't want to point out that we all well wear vests well I say David that's why you're an amateur um all right all right what advice would you give edutainer who want to incorporate comedy into history history education during our times of tense politicization of social issues well there's also a common saying in comedy which is don't punch down um comedy is a really good way to reach audiences and history is a story and sometimes like sometimes there's actually comedy in history and you don't have to do too much to work it like that Galileo example so sometimes just seeking out the comedy is useful in general I think when teaching history there should be a bit you should try to search for those kind of pockets of Joy so it's not just all war and famine and stuff even though that's important so in general to this question I would just say um just make sure that you're never punching down and that's kind of a good rule rule of thumb that will never lead you astray oh boy all right this one Jason Paul outed me here we go as a psychedelic standup comedian that's my side job uh how do you see the role of humor in destigmatizing conversations about mental health and Consciousness exploration so thank you for outing me Jason Paul um I uh work on the site I do a lot of stand-up comedy at um psychedelic uh pharmaceutical companies fundraisers for nonprofits that kind of stuff I found psychedelic therapy very useful uh in my own U uh mental health Journey um so that is actually one of the things that got me interested in humor in science communication is that I found that there was actually a lot to be mined in the world of psychedelic therapy a lot of like relatable jokes now as a psychedelic standup comedian you guys might be wondering what that means it means I'm actually only funny when you're on psychedelics so it won't really work with this audience okay I'm going to skip over this question about whether it's a gif or a gif because it's too polarized guys speaking of politization it's too polarized okay let's see um I find that college students are hesitant to be vulnerable and laugh at humor oh that is so sad um any suggestions on warming them up to laughing and feeling safe to do so that's a really good question and I'm sorry um Rachel that you're experiencing that in your classrooms um that is happening so I think number one is setting up a safe container um and part of that means um how you're going to approach the student part of that means how you encourage the students to engage with others um but ultimately it varies classroom by classroom so I would suggest one that principle earlier about making sure that you're never punching down uh and then two making sure that this is a safe environment however best you can sometimes by stating that explicitly um but then you know frankly a lot of the safety actually kind of emanates from within you like if you're truly feeling afraid that can translate out try to find the safety within yourself such that it will be contain PES to your audience I find that that works personally for me um oh gosh okay these are funny you guys are why am I even teaching you you guys already know what you're doing Jason LEF asked your high school science fair poster was about mgram so have you always been into electrocution um yes Jason I have um I guess that is a recurrent theme but luckily nobody has touched the exposed wiring today so I think I'm doing pretty good um let's see what do you do if your humor fails keep trying or back off great question you know what you tried and that's really important if you truly found something funny and you tried to channel the positivity and it didn't work you're laughing you know you're playing there's this expression in comedy which is like uh I love it's called playing for the backstage and it's where you know your audience doesn't find it but the other doesn't find it funny but like maybe the other comedians in the Green Room do and it's like a really good way of bolstering yourself because you you tried something and comedy is like an experiment you know sometimes you get a null result and the most important thing is that you tried um but then also to be clear don't keep trying if you keep trying despite groans that is known as a dad joke um those are usually uh discouraged okay here we go how are we doing on time I think I'll do one more question um before we take off how to combat aggressive humor with positive humor let's do that one since that seems like the most um the most on topic um I think the way once again to tr to combat aggressive humor is to channel the positivity within yourself um if somebody is going aggressive number one it's it's like a cathartic vent it they're releasing some of their fear and that is kind of valuable I don't mean to like totally put down all aggressive humor it has its place place um but it's really important to um kind of sometimes give it space I think for people if they're feeling that kind of aggressiveness however it starts if it starts to Veer into bullying um then you kind of got a sort of separate problem one thing I like to do I do have stock jokes actually if people start to Heckle me or like get a little too aggressive I'll give you one for free and we'll end with that which is just um if somebody starts to argue with with you in an aggressive way you could just say you know I would love to agree with you but then we'd both be wrong so all right so on that note I'm going to be hanging out over here thank you guys so much for your time spread some science [Applause] [Music] comedy